The Road to Kigali – Part 22

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

It was all too appropriate that Nana Akufo-Addo should delegate the forensics aspect of the New Patriotic Party’s challenge of the declaration of Mr. John Dramani Mahama as winner of Election 2012 to his running-mate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia (See “NPP Identifies Over 1.3 Million ‘Stolen’ Votes” JoyOnline.com/Ghanaweb.com 12/28/12).

It is an open-secret that Dr. Bawumia, a former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, is among the ranks of the foremost Ghanaian economists of his generation. This is one aspect of the 50-year-old man (or thereabouts) that stampeded the members of the upper-echelons of the National Democratic Congress into selecting Mr. Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur as the running-mate of the then-Caretaker President John Dramani Mahama, following the death of President John Evans Atta-Mills.

The other salient reason, of course, had been shamelessly borrowed from the frayed notebook of the erstwhile British colonial imperialists. It is strategically known globally as “Divide-and-Conquer” and may well originally have been borrowed from Mr. Niccolo Machiavelli, the renowned Italian political philosopher and thinker. We shall take up this aspect of the NDC political playbook at a later date.

Suffice it herein to observe that the foregoing strategy clearly does not appear to have worked, if we are to fully appreciate the prejudicial implications of the fact that Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan’s declaration of Mr. Mahama as the decisive winner of Election 2012 was largely based on over-voting and the deliberate disregarding of the clearly delineated rules of electoral engagement going into Election 2012. According to Dr. Bawumia, the criminal incidence of “over-voting alone accounted for [a humongous] 620,443 votes.”

While, indeed, scientifically and/or objectively speaking, we cannot be airtight certain that most of such “over-votes” went in favor of the presidential incumbent, nevertheless, circumstantial evidence verging on Dr. Afari-Gyan’s adamant decision to create 45 additional constituencies with barely three months to Election 2012, against the vehement protestations of the main opposition New Patriotic Party membership, including former President John Agyekum-Kufuor, and the vociferous and resounding acclamation of the top membership of the National Democratic Congress, clearly points to the glaring possibility of the Electoral Commission having been on the invidious warpath to throwing the election in favor of President Mahama and his National Democratic Congress.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind, whatsoever, that the crackerjack legal mavens of the NPP will handily be able to acquit themselves on the preceding score before the august Supreme Court of Ghana.

Another criminal dimension of the case which ought to give the Electoral Commission and its chairman great cause for worry is the staggering discovery that at least 456,933 of the voters were criminally permitted to vote without verification by the Afari-Gyan Gang of Electoral Commissioners. On this count, however, I squarely put the blame on the doorstep of President Mahama. And here must be promptly recalled the fact that shortly after voting in his northern-regional hometown of Bole-Bamboi, President Mahama was widely reported to have bitterly complained about voters who were not being allowed to cast their ballots because their names could not be readily verified by the biometric voting machines.

The reports further went on to say that President Mahama had flagrantly breached electoral protocol by ordering the EC to allow these unverifiable voters to, nonetheless, be allowed to vote. In other words, what Mr. Mahama did here was to criminally use his executive privilege as President of the Republic of Ghana to summarily override laid-down electoral procedures and, in effect, usurp the independent powers constitutionally entrusted the Electoral Commission.

If the preceding account has validity, then Mr. Mahama may well need to be concerned about the possibility of an impeachment proceeding being initiated against him. Elsewhere, we are also significantly informed that multiple voting may have occurred, in view of the fact of several ballot papers being discovered to have the same serial numbers. Then also, there are some 3,841 packets that have been discovered to have words and figures that did not match, whatever the latter means.

What makes the preceding findings quite intriguing has far less to do with the very fact of their discovery, for it is almost certain that over-voting and multiple voting have been integral to the entire temporal span of Fourth-Republican Ghanaian democracy since 1992. What makes the latest developments significant is the fact that this may be the very last time that the people entrusted with protecting the franchise and the destiny of our beloved nation will be able to get away with such act of high treason.

It is also quite conceivable that the Supreme Court of Ghana will put justice and constitutional integrity ahead of the routine intimidation, harassment and persecution tactics of the proverbial movers and shakers of the ruling National Democratic Congress. God bless our homeland Ghana, forevermore!

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Dec. 30, 2012
###