By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
July 10, 2014

In the chaotic lead-up to the vetting of the seven candidates, so far, vying for the presidential nomination of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. Kwesi Pratt, Jr., was widely reported to have admonished the aspirants and their supporters to tone down their rhetorical vitriol against one another and let the party's constitution be their guide (See "Give Aspirants Fair Chance to Campaign, Kwesi Pratt Advises NPP" MyJoyOnline.com 7/10/14). Further, the editor-publisher of the Insight newspaper was quoted as saying that "a party who [sic] honors democracy is the party that will be voted into power."

It is the foregoing quote - you guessed right, my dear reader - that piqued my desire to respond to Mr. Pratt, a diehard rump-Convention People's Party (CPP) media-activist and an inordinately pro-National Democratic Congress propagandist. It goes without saying that Mr. Pratt's admonishment is rather ironic, because the incontrovertible evidence still stands that the New Patriotic Party is the most democratic major political organization in Fourth-Republican Ghana. It is also an incontrovertible fact that the NPP lost the last two general elections primarily because these elections were heavily rigged by the collaborative shenanigans of the Electoral Commissioner and the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress, as well as some devious internal detractors of the NPP presidential candidate, to be certain.

In other words, if winning elections in Ghana were fundamentally about the credentials of the most democratic political party in the country, the NDC would be sitting on the gray margins of opposition political culture in perpetuity. What, for instance, has Mr. Pratt to say about Mr. Rawlings' infamous Swedru Declaration? And also, the flagrantly preemptive manner in which Mr. John Mahama was peremptorily coronated as the NDC presidential candidate for Election 2012?

That the CPP pit-bull cum pro-NDC mercenary cannot be faulted for being crassly untutored about the invariably intricate messiness of the democratic process is beyond moot. The fact of the matter is that the Convention People's Party, both the Nkrumah-led pro-Russia and China juggernaut and the Samia Nkrumah-led rump-CPP, has no credible track-record of democratic praxis. And so, really, precisely who is Mr. Pratt trying to fool? Or what is his bone of contention here? That his favorite prized horse in the NPP presidential primary has absolutely no chance of winning?

It also appears that Mr. Pratt may well be looking towards securing a new job description across the aisle, as it were. Else, why would the widely known NDC hireling be calling for each and every one of the seven candidates contesting for the NDC flagbearership to consider hiring their own communication specialists, in order to supposedly "save the party from disgrace"? And precisely what does Mr. Pratt mean by party members speaking divisively and disgraceflly on media platforms?

Well, here again, the fact of the matter is that by its very non-communistically contentious manner, the NPP presidential primary, whether we like it or not, is going to get blisteringly ugly and nasty and bitter before the fine, staid and placid curtain of institutional unification is lifted. And so, rather, what Mr. Pratt ought to be doing presently is to be solemnly admonishing those among the ranks of NPP presidential aspirants with a track-record of throwing tantrums, capriciously and whimsically, like toddlers, when things do not go their way, to wise up and grow up as well.

Also this moronic streak, on the part of these emotional toddlers, of nihilistically breaking ranks, faith and trust with the party and then mischievously and covertly collaborating with our political and ideological opponents, as well as sworn enemies, in hopes of lining their pockets with filthy lucre, must be stopped. You bet we know these charlatans like day and night; their very nicknames readily give them away.

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