Obed Asamoah Attempts to Come Clean

The former chairman of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) has been desperately stumping for his breakaway party around the country and around the clock. And recently, during a “stopover” at the Ho Polytechnic Institute and the latter's School of Hygiene, Dr. Obed Yao Asamoah, once again, reiterated his staunch support for and absolute confidence in the government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

On the face of it, the former P/NDC foreign affairs and justice minister appears to be putting forth a vigorous political fight for his year-and-half old Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), which continues to languish in the abysmal shadow of the sanguinary record of the Dzelukope Mafia-minted National Democratic Congress. Two things, however, remain valid, namely, the grim fact that the Democratic Freedom Party – a patent take on Black America's Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party of the 1960s Civil Rights era – is a miserable long shot in next year's general elections, and the desperate sinking-man's overtures of the DFP founder for acceptance and, perhaps, even a strategic alliance with the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).

As an Ewe-Akan, however, Dr. Obed Asamoah remarkably appreciates the imperative need for him to chart a dignified political course – as reflected in the dictum: “Animguase mfata Okaniba” – thus the extreme difficulty which he obviously appears to be having in overtly reaching out for rehabilitative realignment with the ideological scions of the Danquah-Busia Tradition of Indigenous Democratic capitalism.

And it is precisely for the preceding reason that Dr. Asamoah appears to have abruptly and deftly negotiated himself out of the clinically morbid pseudo-Socialism of the so-called National Democratic Congress. For the former University of Ghana law lecturer fully appreciates the starkly stultifying contradiction between the stentorian, albeit vacuous, espousal of Socialism – even Democratic Socialism – and the irredeemably unconscionable sale of State – or public – enterprises to the private entrepreneurial cronies of these same, self-styled Social-Democrats of the Provisional National Democratic Congress.

Consequently, during his campaign stopover at the Ho Polytechnic Institute and the latter's School of Hygiene (see “NDC Accusations of NPP Corruption [a] Political Gimmick – Obed Asamoah” Ghanaweb.com 11/26/07), Dr. Asamoah was widely reported by the official Ghana News Agency (GNA) that in the highly unlikely event of his party being accorded the electoral mandate in 2008, his “DFP government would give full meaning to the concept of private enterprise, as it was the engine of growth [; and, also, that a DFP government] would subsidize agricultural inputs and create markets for the produce of farmers as a means of eradicating poverty[,] since [Ghanaian] farmers constitute about 70 percent of the population.”

Ironically, this Ewe-Akan native of Likpe-Kukurantumi, in the Volta Region of Ghana, was also, indisputably, the master-brain behind the political longevity of the Provisional National Democratic Congress and, particularly, the unsavory and insidious longevity of the Dzelukope Mafia. And so even as his political fortunes have precipitously plummeted with that of the swashbuckling P/NDC, nonetheless, the gaping absence of Dr. Obed Yao (he may now have to begin spelling his middle name in the more conventional Akan orthography of “Yaw,” to logically reflect both his ideological and cultural transformation) Asamoah among the raucous ranks of the P/NDC leadership cannot be gainsaid. And it is all the better. The tragedy, though, inheres in the fact that it took the founder of the Democratic Freedom Party so long to come to the rude realization – or awakening - of the fact of the veritable political nuisance that increasingly the ideological thrust and presence of the P/NDC on the postcolonial Ghanaian landscape has come to be envisaged.

Still, it is better late than never. And this is partly the reason why it may be cautiously auspicious for the prime movers and shakers of the ruling New Patriotic Party to figure out a productive and progressive method of responding to the desperate overtures of the DFP leader at least half-way. The latter party's clearly articulated ideological platform makes it far more appealing, by way of the possibility of mergence or alliance formation, than any likely misalliance, as regrettably occurred in the recent past, between the NPP and the crassly opportunistic Convention People's Party (CPP). The predictable, albeit rather comical, behavior of Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom ought to offer prime protective grist to the ruling New Patriotic Party for the foreseeable future.

Indeed, Dr. Obed Asamoah could not have hit the proverbial nail harder on its head when he reminded his audience that “the Public Accounts Committee [of Ghana's National Assembly] never sat in public [during the marathon tenure of the self-righteous P/NDC government] and [also that] reports of the Auditor-General's Department were never made public…for the public to know the [actual] level of [government] corruption of that era.”

Needless to say, Dr. Asamoah knows exactly what the Likpe-Kukurantumi native is talking about; for he actively and centrally participated in almost every signal activity of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Sounds of Sirens: Essays in African Politics and Culture” (iUniverse.com, 2004). E-mail: [email protected].