By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

I have before me two news articles, respectively, titled "NDC Legal Team Denies Ever Implying 2012 Polls Were Flawed," dated May 9, 2013 and sourced to JoyOnline.com and published by Ghanaweb.com. The other article is captioned "You Also Benefited From Electoral Fraud - Adu-Asare Tells NPP." The latter article, also published by JoyOnline.com on April 25, 2013, is rather fascinating and edifying because it poignantly exposes the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for the pathological cynics and unconscionable charlatans that they veritably are.

Anyway, speaking on Asempa Fm-Radio's Ekosii Sen (How Did It Go?) program, Mr. Adu-Asare, the former National Democratic Congress' Member of Parliament for Adentan Constituency, in Central Accra, was reported to have critically observed that New Patriotic Party "polling agents were not vigilant enough to protect the votes of their [presidential] candidate in the various polling stations around the country."

The unmistakable implication here, of course, is that the lack of vigilance on the part of Akufo-Addo partisans opened the floodgates for a clinically theft-prone National Democratic Congress (NDC) polling agents to illegally bag ballots, or votes, belonging to Nana Akufo-Addo under the name of the then-Caretaker President John Dramani Mahama.

And so, clearly, what we have here is an open and shameless admission by a prominent member of the ruling National Democratic Congress that, indeed, contrary to what the Ato Dadzie-led NDC Legal Team would have Ghanaians and the global community believe, deliberate electoral rigging, as forensically and convincingly attested by Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the second petitioner of the Election 2012 impasse, did, indeed, take place. Needless to say, this is the sort of significant unsolicited testimony which the Atuguba-presided panel of Supreme Court jurists ought to be sedulously studying and considering as they prepare to hand down their verdict in the offing.

The preceding is quite edifying and fascinating because in the aftermath of the fraudulent declaration of Mr. Mahama as the decisive winner of Election 2012, by Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the Electoral Commissioner (EC), the NDC general-secretary, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, made a strikingly similar remark to that of Mr. Adu-Asare which could be readily accessed and verified via Google, the global Internet search engine.

For me, however, what is even more intriguing is the patently lame and silly manner in which key NDC operatives have been desperately struggling to extricate themselves from their own proverbial Tar-Baby. That they are highly unlikely to succeed, no matter how hard they try, is a foregone conclusion. The tricky catch here, though, is that the limpid clarity and forensic soundness of the evidence presented by Dr. Bawumia may not necessarily carry weight with the Atuguba Court. This is a personal observation objectively based on the conduct of the presiding judge; but, of course, it ought to be promptly pointed out that Justice Atuguba's is only one out of a maximum number of nine votes. And the fact that he is widely known and associated with the ideological tenets of the National Democratic Congress does not necessarily mean, or imply, that Justice William Atuguba is not his own man.

In fact, he may shockingly be his own man; and on a good day and in the best of moods may quite remarkably even surprise the viewing global public by clinically casting his lot on the strength of the evidence without qualms.

At any rate, Mr. Adu-Asare's rather lame assertion that the New Patriotic Party may have remarkably benefited from "excess votes" in the Central Region, in 2004, does not constructively address the Akufo-Addo/NPP petition. First of all, Nana Akufo-Addo was not the the NPP presidential candidate or the running-made of the latter at the time in question. The man is also not even from the Central Region. But even more significant is the fact that Nana Akufo-Addo did not prevent the purportedly aggrieved National Democratic Congress' presidential candidate from petitioning the Supreme Court for redress.

Predictably, in much the same lame and risible manner, the Ato Dadzie-led NDC Legal Team is now claiming, rather childishly that, in fact, considerable over-voting had occurred in the Asante Region, putatively the traditional stronghold of the NPP. Paradoxically, the foregoing state of affairs, even if it could be objectively corroborated, still falls under the statutory responsibility of Dr. Afari-Gyan and the Electoral Commission, and not either that of Nana Akufo-Addo or the main opposition New Patriotic Party.

It also clearly boosts Dr. Bawumia's argument that there was a calculated and collusive decision by Messrs. Afari-Gyan and Mahama not only to cause widespread over-voting, but also to illegally guarantee the electoral victory of Mr. Mahama at all costs.

____________________________________________________ *Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D. Department of English Nassau Community College of SUNY Garden City, New York May 17, 2013 E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

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