There is absolutely no doubt that more work needs to be done in order to comfortably position a presumably Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia-led post-Akufo-Addo New Patriotic Party into the 2024 Presidential Election. Well, so far, the turbid economic climate does not seem to be significantly playing in favor of the present Akufo-Addo/Bawumia Administration, although, on the whole, it cannot be seriously gainsaid that the present government has made more remarkable material advances in all five major sectors of Ghana’s economy than all previous four Fourth-Republican governments, namely, the Rawlings, Agyekum-Kufuor, Atta-Mills and Mahama governments. The sectors of the macroeconomy in which the Akufo-Addo Administration may be credibly envisaged to have made a significant difference are Education, Healthcare, Agriculture, Transport and Communication, and National Security.
Now, where I strongly disagree with Mr. Karbo regards the critical question of whether, indeed, in the wake of then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s handy defeat of some 16 other candidates for the party’s topmost elective position in the runup to the 2008 Presidential Election, against the winner’s opposite number from the then main opposition National Democratic Congress, in the quite formidable personality of the then former Vice-President John Evans Atta-Mills, late, the New Patriotic Party delegates who had elected Nana Akufo-Addo by nearly 50 percent of the votes were really pumped up or self-assured of having their candidate clinch a handy victory in the December 2008 Presidential Election, when they emerged from the Great Hall of the University of Ghana, Legon, where they had cast their most historic ballots.
To be certain, the delegates who emerged from the December 2007 NPP Delegates’ Convention were, perhaps, far more visibly dispirited than they had been since the founding and establishment of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo-inspired Elephant Party (EP) a decade-and-half earlier. Mr. Karbo is smack on target to studiously observe that the level of intra-party acrimony was almost metallic in both heft and timbre or texture. It was also quite obvious to any critical and studious observer that there was a critical mass of party delegates and sulking sore-loser operatives who were ravenously ready to go to bat for the dynastic or monarchical Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress who, by the way, was privileged with the added bonus or electoral benefit of having served one full-term as the substantive Vice-President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana and the trusted right-hand man of the country’s longest-ruling military dictator and the second-longest reigning faux-civilianized democratically elected Inaugural President of Ghana’s Fourth Republic.
In other words, going into the 2008 Presidential Election, former Vice-President John Evans Atta-Mills, who had already run two losing battles against the now-lame-duck President John “Kofi Diawuo” Agyekum-Kufuor, had a slight edge and a relatively greater name recognition among eligible and registered voters than his New Patriotic Party main opponent who, by the way, also had a quite remarkable following and name recognition because not only had Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo served, respectively, as Attorney-General and Minister of Justice and, subsequently, as Foreign and ECOWAS Regional Integration Minister in the outgoing Agyekum-Kufuor government, Nana Akufo-Addo’s legendary patriarch, the late Oxbridge-educated Mathematician and Philosopher, Chief Justice Edward Akufo-Addo, had also served as Ceremonial President to Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia and his Progress Party (PP) government.
He, obviously, did not want to rake over old wounds, as it were, else Mr. Karbo would also have highlighted the patently lurid, morally repugnant and irredeemably inglorious role that the inimically and strategically treacherously scheduled National Merit Honors Awards, hosted by Messrs. Agyekum-Kufuor and Kwadwo Mpiani, the former’s relative, Prempeh College buddy and Presidential Chief-of-Staff, played in effectively sabotaging any chance of an electoral victory for Candidate Akufo-Addo in 2008. Reams and tons have already been written about the latter most traitorous epic propaganda spiel launched by the operatives of the Agyekum-Kufuor and Mpiani Faction of the New Patriotic Party on behalf of Candidate Akufo-Addo’s main opponents in the vanguard ranks of the National Democratic Congress, so it bears skipping the painful retelling of this dastardly and all-too-predictable and, initially, very successful attempt by his very own fellow party and ideological truckers to thoroughly, effectively and permanently torpedo the long-nursed presidential ambitions of the man who presently serves as the Fifth President of the Fourth Republic of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana.
There will be more dirt and painful memories to unearth and discuss further at length as we steadily and inexorably head into the 2024 General Election. Till then, Dear Reader, stay put. So long!
*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
March 19, 2022
Email: okoampaahoofekwame@gmail.com
