Opinions of Thursday, 19 May 2016

Columnist: The Catalyst newspaper

Power-sharing - NPP’s ultimate agenda

To think that the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) persistent raucous conduct on the political scene ahead of the 2016 general elections is just one of those things associated with politics in our part of the world must be proof of obliviousness regarding a sinister plot by the desperate opposition party to throw the country into chaos after another defeat at the polls, which the party hopes to ride on and eventually push for a power-sharing arrangement with the John Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) government.
At the behest of their twice defeated and third-time flagbearer, the NPP have set in motion a number of tactical moves they believe would help them achieve their dastardly aim.

One of such moves is to create a mindset of total hopelessness among the party’s unsuspecting supporters in particular, and the Ghanaian public in general, despite the enormous progress the Mahama government has made with indications of good prospects. This will facilitate mass mobilization of people onto the streets to cause mayhem and put pressure on the powers that be to succumb to the demand of power-sharing between NDC’s President Mahama and NPP’s Akufo-Addo, The Catalyst has learnt.
The issue of mercenary training of some NPP persons and party executives by three South African ex-security offers and some Serbian trainers brought secretly into the country by the party, with the aim to attack the pillars of power, as revealed by their embattled chairman, Mr. Paul Afoko, is another key element in preparations for a chaotic 2016 elections, the paper can state.

Sources have also linked the unending fiery internal wrangling within the Akufo-Addo-led NPP to the said plot. Explaining, the sources indicate that the “intolerant militant wing” that has taken over the NPP, according to Mr Afoko, under the explicit command of Mr Akufo-Addo, is leaving no stone unturned in ensuring that the cool heads at various leadership positions of the party who the flagbearer considers unbending to his whims and caprices and are thus likely to stand in the way of his “all-die-be-die” philosophy are chased out.

Mr Paul Afoko and Kwabena Agyapong, the elected national chairman and general secretary of the NPP respectfully, have been hounded out of office and replaced with persons in acting positions. A host of other party executives deemed loyal to the deposed national officials have also been suspended.
The idea of power-sharing as a tool for fighting elections by the NPP first came to public attention after the runoff in the 2008 elections when it was stated at a secret meeting of NPP gurus at Hon Atta Akyea’s office as one of many options available to the party.

On a secretly recorded tape aired on Radio Gold, Hon. Malik Yakubu, one time interior minister in the Kufuour-led NPP government could be heard stating categorically that relinquishing power totally to then NDC Candidate, Prof. John Evans Atta Mills who was the obvious winner of the election, was out of the question and that the worst that could happen to the NPP in that election would be a power-sharing arrangement.

Hon Atta Akyea, who is the current Member of Parliament (MP) for Abuakwa South confirmed that the said meeting took place in his office, after lawyers of Mr Akufo-Addo failed to secure a court injunction on Thursday January 1, 2009, because of a swift intervention by Friends of the Court in, what could be described as, a backdoor attempt by the NPP flagbearer and his henchmen to stop the Tain election, which was going to be the tiebreaker.
Among other things discussed on the tape was a plot to litter the Volta region with dead bodies procured from the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital morgue to be used by the NPP as proof of its polling agents supposedly killed in the Volta region.
The paper’s sources have pointed out that the decision by Mr Akufo-Addo to go to the Supreme Court in the 2012 Election Petition case was an afterthought, as his real intention was to mastermind a chaotic street action in order to force President Mahama to a compromise.
The intention of the NPP flagbearer and his “intolerant militant wing”, the paper has learnt, was to create a state of emergency through violent street actions but failed, and that if he had succeeded in throwing the contry into total chaos, the decision to go to court would have been totally out of the question.

Following the declaration of the 2012 election results by the Electoral Commission (EC), supporters of the NPP massed up at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle and its environs in Accra and engaged in several acts of violence.

It is a continuation of this grand agenda in the 2016 elections that the NPP flagbearer has tasked his running mate to lead the charge of creating of a state of despondency among members in particular whilst he remains in full control of the party’s militants who have already began showing signs of what they are capable of doing, given the grievous atrocities they have committed as far as the party’s entrenched internal crisis is concerned.