"Obasanjo's Academy" & ROPAA: NPP's last line

“Obasanjo’s Academy” is a virtual institution of higher learning where disgruntled NPP politicians claim to have enrolled to learn the tricks inherent in rigging elections. This has caught the attention of a key whistle blower who is ready to give a sworn testimony about NPP’s intentions to rig the 2008 elections, and he contacted us with the information. The “syllabus” of the Academy is a school of thought that is being crafted by the “crafty” NPP government to salvage power “by any means necessary”. This “syllabus”, supposedly, will serve as a manual to rig the 2008 elections. It describes how malicious the voter fraud will be perpetrated by organized criminals who are to be paid by the corrupt NPP power brokers.

The other NPP life line is ROPAA, an inconsequential and convoluted LAW passed by the NPP-controlled parliament to throw dust into the eyes of DIASPORANS, is purported to be used to tweak overseas votes, because it will be easy to manipulate Diaspora voting data to swing elections. If ROPAA is implemented, the gates to election fraud will be wide open. Ultimately, ROPAA will make the 2008 election fraud as easy as stealing candy from a baby.

Ghanaians hope the Electoral Commissioner (EC) is aware of these aforementioned shenanigans that NPP intends to utilize during the 2008 elections. If this “development” is not “arrested” by the EC, Ghana’s 15-year DEMOCRACY will be left with a SPLOTCH and the current politico socio-economic stability will be in jeopardy. The EC‘s responsibility is to oversee elections and to ensure that the election law is implemented fairly. The Electoral Commission does not just report election results; they can create it with pressure from the government. But can they also conspire to control election results? Absolutely.

The ongoing ROPAA and “Obasanjo’s Academy” insanity has confirmed something that we have known and thought about for a while. The inquiring minds of Ghanaians want to know the rational behind the filing of the ROPAA suit (to hasten its implementation) in Kumasi and whether it was by design or chance that the three plaintiffs are all Ashantis (The TRIUMVIRATE). Historically, all landmark class action suits are filed in Accra Furthermore, these DEVILS ADVOCATES live in the U.S. and it would have been convenient, logistically and economically, to file the suit in Accra. Ladies and Gentlemen, you do not need to be a rocket scientist or “a supposed” Oxford University alum to figure this out. The rigged 2004 elections have reinforced the contention that the NPP government has a history of buying the electoral process which, unless I am mistaken, is the foundation of our democracy. It only makes common sense that every gear, every mechanism, every nook and cranny of every part of the voting process ought to be in the sunlight, wide open to public view. How else can the public be reasonably assured that they are participating in an unrigged election where their votes actually mean something? Yet one of the most mysterious, low-profile, covert, shadowy, questionable mechanisms of Ghanaian democracy is the vote count.

Gone are the days when we use to shoot each other to decide the transfer of power (coup d’etats). Now, thanks to the constitution and democracy, we transfer power by the ballot at election time. To ensure transparency each aspect of the votes counted in 2004 should have been conducted officially by the government under the microscopic scrutiny of party officials, poll workers, curious voters and the media, depending on the area where the counting is taking place. In 2004, none of the officials who certified the votes as ACCURATE and HONEST were actual “vote-counters”, and they did not even have oversight of the votes counted inside the ballot boxes. Thus, they did not have any legitimate means of “certifying” that the 2004 vote count was ACCURATE and HONEST. As a result, the public had near zero knowledge of what some unscrupulous election officials were able to accomplish (change votes in favor of NPP). When we began researching the integrity of the election process, we wanted to believe that the talk of rigging the 2004 elections was just overblown hype. However, we have since discovered that the voting system was a veritable can of worms, so open to tampering by organized election fraudsters of the incumbent party. What few realized is that a key aspect of the votes counted during 2004 elections was done in secret. What is more, the voters were legally denied the right to find out precisely how their vote was counted.

My sources tell me that the NPP party and some establishment media plan to coalesce to thwart any attempt to get rid of their precious, riggable ROPAA and “Obasanjo”s Academy” manual and vote counting systems. If this happens, then we cannot speak the most majestic words a democracy can offer: THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN. But we can write and talk about THE GREATEST COVER-UP VOTEGATE IN GHANA.

Abirekyiba Kofi Sammy, Atimpoku

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