On Governance, the Economy, Probity, Tribalism, Accountability and Corruption, NPP Still Comes Up Smack on Top, Magnus!

If the qualities that appear in the title of this column which, by the way, were borrowed directly from the article written and published by Magnus Naabe RexDanquah (See “Making the State of Ghana’s Economy, Governance, Probity, Tribalism, Accountability and Corruption as the Real Issues for the Coming Elections, 2024” Modernghana.com 4/28/24) are, indeed, the criteria upon which the various political parties contesting the December 7, 2024, Ghana’s General Election will be assessed by registered and eligible voters in the country, especially vis-à-vis the country’s two major political parties, namely, the presently ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), then we can all rest assured that the Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia-led New Patriotic Party will definitely be the party to beat.

As well, if, indeed, as Mr. RexDanquah so pontifically claims, the present Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party government has decidedly outlived its welcome and, for that matter, it usefulness, then, of course, Ghanaian citizens and voters may have to first and foremost, critically examine the salient reasons and/or factors as a direct result of which the John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama-led ragtag government of the National Democratic Congress was seismically voted out of power in December 2016, with the largest margin of victory ever recorded by any political party in the 30-odd-year history of Fourth-Republican Ghana.

Now, on the equally significant and critical question of “Corruption” and “Accountability,” maybe we need to ask the author, an obviously implacable enemy of the leadership and the entire institutional establishment of the New Patriotic Party, why Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” (Ouagadougou-Nkonfem Flying) Dramani Mahama continues to desperately campaign for a clearly undeserved platform of “Correcting his past mistakes,” instead of telling Ghanaian voters and citizens precisely what makes the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region , the candidate who deserves to be envisaged as the more or the better preferred of the country’s aforementioned two major political parties.

For the present, let us hypothetically ignore the practically inescapable fact that as a fallible or an incurably imperfect species of humanity, Candidate Mahama is far more likely, given a second chance, to make even far many more egregious mistakes than be able to correct retroactively, and it becomes at once unarguably conspicuous that it is only a clinically demented megalomania who could so cavalierly presume to be able to blasphemously insult the intelligence of Ghana’s electorate and the citizenry at large, and be able to easily and cheaply get away with the same in a lightening flash.

Then also, what we need to critically and emphatically underscore here is the all-too-logical fact that if, indeed, the operatives of the New Patriotic Party could be aptly or reasonable accused of having expended more of Ghana’s fiscal resources than any other Fourth Republican political party – and here, of course, the reference is squarely to the country’s two major parties – then, of course, it also goes without debate that the New Patriotic Party is on record to have both initiated and successfully completed far many more social-intervention and lumpen-poor oriented national development projects and programs than all the previous three National Democratic Congress-sponsored governments combined.

Among the Akan-speaking majority populace of Ghana, there is an adage that runs tersely as follows: “It is the watercarrier who is also invariably liable to break the waterpot.” Which, probably, does not even explain matters as well or eloquently enough, in view of the fact that compared to the number and the impact of NPP-initiated projects and programs on the ground, the kleptocratic and the kleptomaniacal operatives of the National Democratic Congress may still be aptly envisaged to have criminally embezzled or squandered more of the country’s fiscal resources than the present Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party, largely in the nation-wrecking name and form of Judgment-Debt Awards, callously and collusively created by these local latter-day petty-bourgeoisie compradors and their foreign and largely European and Western principals.

While, indeed, it goes without saying that much still remains to be done in order to drastically rein in the scourge and the curse of the Judgment-Debt Bonanza, for want of a more appropriate descriptive word, the incontrovertible fact remains that relatively speaking, the Mahama Gravy Train of Judgment-Debt Racketeers conspicuously “dwarfs” its counterpart under the tenure of the legendary and the proverbial Leprechaun of Akyem-Abomosu and Kyebi. Mr. Magnus Naabe RexDanquah can smugly and simply not voraciously devour his metaphorical cake and imperiously demand to have it back at the same time.

The indescribably caustic and implacably vitriolic Akufo-Addo and New Patriotic Party critic cannot demand accountability in government while, at the same time, fervidly praying for the imminent return of the man whom the late Founding-Father of the National Democratic Congress, to wit, former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings bitterly and very publicly described as the most thoroughgoing corrupt postcolonial Ghanaian leader. Now, did we go, or did we come, Dear Mr. RexDanquah?

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]