Opinions of Wednesday, 14 September 2005
Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame
The Life And Times Of J. J. Rawlings - Part 4
Believe me, I have been religiously trying to wax philosophical regarding my ongoing series on His Tyrannical Eminence (HTE) but, unfortunately, there is only so much that even the best-intentioned analyst could cognitively bring to bear on the rather plodding and bizarre subject of a frozen cartoon character. And so, here again, sad to say, we are ineluctably and pathetically reduced to squarely having to discuss, rather unprofitably, the paralogical essence that is the defining character of HTE - and by the latter characters, of course, we are referring to His Tyrannical Eminence.
But what is even more intriguing about this aforementioned cartoon character and the caliber of those so-called members of the Ghanaian intelligentsia who actively participated in the crafting of the 1992 Fourth Republican Constitution, is the fact that for the first time in our beloved country?s postcolonial history a sitting, sanguinary military dictator was allowed to found a political party - the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC) - and actually stand for presidential election and be literally offered the people?s mandate on a golden platter. In brief, it is our unequivocal contention herein that technically speaking, the Fourth Republic of postcolonial Ghana did not commence until the 2000 presidential election which brought Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor and his New Patriotic Party (NPP) to power. In effect, the period between 1992 and 2000 was a transitional moment during which a notorious political outlaw and, to be specific, a brazen career coup-plotter and mass murderer deftly stage-managed and theatrically mainstreamed himself into unprecedented political legitimacy.
Even so, as the celebrated Elizabethan poet and playwright William Shakespeare insightfully observed some three-and-half centuries ago, ?A rose by any other name, would still smell the same.? And here, we take the rather rude liberty in paraphrasing Mr. Shakespeare as follows: ?A terrorist, mass murderer and coup-plotter going by the name of President Rawlings, is still Chairman Rawlings, a dictator and a terrorist.? And terrorists, it has been lately observed, and quite accurately, often play on ethnic or ?tribal? sentiments as a Machiavellian means to seizing and hanging perennially onto power. Thus, it came as hardly any surprise that in the wake of the 2004 presidential election, which witnessed the second condign and massive defeat of the National Democratic Congress, His Tyrannical Eminence resorted to the primitive post-campaign gimmick of insulting the intelligence of a section of the Ghanaian electorate which had cast its ballot on the rational and legitimate basis of performance, probity and accountability, rather than the low-minded ideology of tribalism. In the preceding instance, the subject electorate were the nimble-witted and highly enlightened people of the Central Region of Ghana. In an article titled ?NPP Stole Elections - JJ? which initially appeared in the Ghanaian Chronicle and subsequently was posted on Ghanaweb.com, His Tyrannical Eminence claimed, characteristically erratically, that ?the reason why the voting pattern did not go in favor of the NDC - and for that matter, the presidential candidate - was because the New Patriotic Party [had] deliberately stolen the election [in order] to discredit Professor Atta-Mills [the NDC?s presidential flag-bearer and former Ghanaian vice-president] who hails from the Central Region?(Ghanaweb.com 1/24/05).
We highlight the preceding crime of ethnocentrism, or ethnic chauvinism, on the part of His Tyrannical Eminence, because in the past the National Democratic Congress has been known to persecute - and in some cases even reportedly execute - voters from the Volta Region of Ghana, particularly voters of Ewe ethnic extraction, who ideologically went against the grain by voting for other political parties rather than the NDC. And here, also, we hasten to add the fact that His Tyrannical Eminence who is, by his own acknowledgement, partly Scottish and Ewe, hails from the Volta Region, even though legend has it that His Tyrannical Eminence was born in the Ghanaian capital of Accra. Indeed, in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, HTE wrote and dispatched a rather infantile and outright embarrassing, and fatuous, letter of complaint to substantive Nigerian president Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo, predicting apocalyptically that the NPP was certain to clinch victory on the basis of unspecified electoral fraud.
Needless to say, HTE, in writing his indubitably lunatic letter to President Obasanjo, was merely behaving exactly like himself. In Ghana, there is a poetic term for HTE?s brand of lunacy - it is called ?Self-Conscious Madness? or ?Calculated Madness.? In the original Akan, the latter translates as ?Bodam Aniatee.? In sum, having threatened and bullied his way to power for two decades, HTE had since long concluded that the overwhelming majority of his half-countrymen and women were lily-livered enough to be perennially and routinely and rabidly spooked at whim. This time around, however, HTE had woefully miscalculated, as many hitherto pacifist and unsuspecting Ghanaians promptly called his bluff and HTE fell hard and flat on his prats. The well-meaning and patriotic voters of Ghana?s Central Region also did not hesitate to let HTE know that they were more than well-prepared to unreservedly meet tit with tat.
Indeed, those of us avid students of postcolonial Ghanaian politics who have been studiously following the sinister and bizarre activities of the so-called National Democratic Congress know exactly what His Tyrannical Eminence is alluding to when the longest-reigning Ghanaian dictator accuses the ruling New Patriotic Party leadership of having purchased voters of the Central Region with ?a lot of money.? And here, perhaps, it is squarely in order for somebody to remind His Tyrannical Eminence that the era of the Transatlantic Slave Trade has been over for nearly two centuries. Thus for this pathological cynic to be raking coals over those painful memories - bearing in mind that the Central Region possesses more than half of Ghana?s former slave forts and castles - constitutes the very height of abject and gross insensitivity. But what is even more interesting is the fact that in 1996, scouts of the National Democratic Congress routinely roamed Ghanaian picnic grounds registering potential voters many of whom had not lived in the country for a decade or more. And what is more, these potential diasporic Ghanaian voters were being asked to pay anywhere between $50-100 in order to be registered to vote. Indeed, this writer personally witnessed one such voter-registration drive during a picnic at the Roosevelt Park, a few miles outside New York City. Back then, nobody heard the ?Katamanso? boys of the National Democratic Congress decrying the purportedly unwieldy logistics involved in organizing the franchise for Ghanaians resident abroad, particularly here in the United States.
Furthermore and quite intriguingly, even Ghanaians who could no longer remember their former addresses back home were being encouraged by the ?Katamanso? hacks to simply make something up; they were being readily assured that nobody was going to mail them any material via these ?ghost? addresses. And so it comes as rather quite risible that many an NDC party stalwart and supporter should be decrying the current salutary and quite legitimate attempt being made by parliamentary representatives of the ruling NPP to ensure that well-meaning and interested Ghanaians abroad are afforded the franchise during the 2008 general elections and beyond. Back in 1996, for instance, if memory serves us accurately, none of the ?Katamanso? boys decried the possibility of diasporic Ghanaian citizens voting enmass in favor of the then-opposition New Patriotic Party. To be certain, the exact opposite was the case; and to their credit, no leading members of the NPP decried the preceding initiative, except for Mr. Joe daRocha.
And regarding the preceding, a few observations would be quite in order. First of all, for some leading members of the NDC to be vehemently decrying the granting of the franchise to diasporic Ghanaians, a process which the NDC itself advocated, under the virtual one-party tenure of His Tyrannical Eminence, should raise eyebrows. Secondly, the NDC?s assertion that granted the franchise most Ghanaians resident abroad would vote for the ruling NPP, can only point to one fact - the fact that the NDC top leadership perceives itself to have miserably failed Ghanaians. The flip side, however, is the fact that the NDC leadership, as has been characteristic, woefully underestimates the electoral maturity of diasporic Ghanaians. And this is rather ironic, in view of the fact that most Ghanaians abroad, particularly those of us out here in the West, have a relatively longer experience with electoral democracy than our brothers and sisters at home, particularly those of NDC ideological suasion. It would also be quite in order if the Kufuor administration decides to launch an investigation into electoral irregularities in 1992 and 1996, particularly vis-?-vis the appropriation of ?ghost? voters? register.
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