By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor
Friday, August 24, 2012

Gradually, the hypocrisy, treachery, and foolery that undergird the NPP’s political agenda are emerging to confirm opinions that the party doesn’t have what it takes to outdo any of the governments, especially the incumbent, that it has continued to waste its resources condemning.

But in consonance with the party’s grand agenda of using classical Greek sophistry as a major political weapon, we hardly expect anything to change for the better.

Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, National Chairman of the NPP, has just added more vim to such hypocrisy, treachery, and foolery. He has conceded that “two political terms, that is eight years, are just not enough to transform a country’s economy.”

Speaking on Election Headquarters on Joy FM on Friday, he stressed that it will be impossible to transform a nation within that duration:

“You cannot transform [an economy] in eight years. We will not transform a whole nation, a whole economy in eight years” (Myjoynonline, 8/24/12).
He adduced good reasons to support his claim. But his concession doesn’t change anything. It rather reinforces my disdain for such a political camp. And here is why.

For how long have these NPP bigwigs known this fact? Certainly, not today. If the NPP functionaries agree with Obetsebi-Lamptey, why will they mount rooftops to launch scathing attacks on ex-President Mills and his successor for not transforming the economy in less than 4 years in power? Why do they think that they need more than 8 years to achieve their objectives and yet deny others that latitude?

Granted that we accept Obetsebi-Lamptey’s position as tenable, what does it tell us about the jockeying for power by the NPP, knowing very well that no government can accomplish the tasks precipitating economic transformation within the constitutionally mandated period in power?

More importantly, then, how will the NPP hope to accomplish its tasks successfully to justify any return to power at Election 2012 for as long as the constitutionally mandated tenure is not changed? Or do they want to be in power on a trial-and-error basis only? To begin implementing policies and programmes only to have them abandoned when they lose power or when the mandatory 8 year tenure ends (assuming that the government is retained in power at Election 2016)? Too many contradictions here already!

This is where the NPP’s treachery thickens. I remember very well that their Akufo-Addo had once claimed that he could transform the country’s economy in 10 years, suggesting that he might need the current four-year term extended to five years—and hope to be re-elected.

Could that be why ex-President Kufuor also suggested that the four-year term be extended to five years?

Rather intriguingly, no one in the NDC is asking that the Presidential term be extended beyond what it has been since the 1992 Constitution was promulgated. All that matters is to make the best use of the mandate.
On the contrary, the NPP is doing otherwise, now clamouring for power through a string of promises that will lead nowhere, yet unrelenting in harassing the electorate for attention, although knowing full well that it can’t fulfill those promises under the current four-year term. Who are these NPP fundamentalists fooling?

Against this background, where is the guarantee that the grand designs on paper that the NPP calls its manifesto can be successfully implemented in four years or 8 years if re-elected?

I see something ridiculous behind this concession by the NPP National Chairman and will continue to say that the NPP doesn’t really know how to do politics to return to power. Having already dodged glaring facts all this while, I am not in the least surprised that reality is now dawning on these “Mate Me Ho” elements who regard Ghanaian politics as their creation and political power as their bona fide entitlement.

There is still more to this concession, though, especially if the elements of treachery, hypocrisy, and foolery take centre-stage.
The NPP’s flagbearer (Akufo-Addo) fits in here. Emerging as a bundle of contradictions, he seems to be giving himself and his party a dangerous chameleonic nature that won’t redound to their electoral fortunes.
Let’s take one or two issues for discussion. We begin with Akufo-Addo’s declaration of himself as “a man of peace.” In his encounter at the press soiree yesterday, he insisted that he was peace-loving and that violence at Election 2012 could be prevented if all politicians did their best to ensure peaceful, smooth, free, and fair elections. Good utterances for the sake of political rhetoric.

But the reality is that no man of peace will incite his followers with a slogan couched in violence and waiting to be effected in practical action to cause mayhem. His “All-die-be-die” war-mongering slogan doesn’t portend peace. It is the spark for a conflagration, especially within the context of an electoral defeat for the NPP.

I am yet to be persuaded that a man of peace will insist on screaming “All-die-be-die” at the top of his voice even when the general consensus is that such a war-mongering attitude runs counter to the mood of the citizens.
And against all suasion, he has refused to apologize for resorting to scare-mongering. Worse still, he has refused to denounce and renounce that slogan despite the overwhelming condemnation it has received from all segments of the population except those in his NPP with similar sentiments.
Furthermore, Akufo-Addo hasn’t yet condemned Kennedy Agyapong’s genocidal statement, declaring war in the country, and urging Akans (especially those in the Ashanti Region) to kill Ewes and Gas.

By persistently spurning all suasion to do the obvious and help tone down on the rhetoric of political violence, Akufo-Addo doesn’t come across as a peace-loving man. At least, if actions are to be seen and heard as speaking louder than words, what he has given me to know of him so far doesn’t assuage my doubts, fears, and suspicions that he is not what he is stridently labeling himself.
At least, I saw what he could do, using the Alliance for Change to create needless panic in the society. He still gives us an earful of drivel, calling himself “a man of peace” yet making unguarded utterances to foment trouble. What manner of man is this?

Probably, he may see himself as being for peace but when he speaks, he is for war. And the more he speaks—as he loves speaking—the more he gives me to understand that his words are more prone to creating tension than ensuring peace. Is that what a true “man of peace” should render? I don’t think so.
By and large, then, what the NPP has given me to know is that it is not straightforward in its dealings with Ghanaians. If Obetsebi-Lamptey’s admission is to be believed, then, Ghanaians will have a lot of thinking and re-thinking to do anytime any functionary of the NPP says anything about our national life.
Certainly, behind the mask is the man, represented by the political entity called the NPP. We won’t see the mask as the reality to work with but the man behind that mask. And that man is nothing but hypocrisy personified to the highest degree. Ghanaians, beware!

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