Feature: As Goes Mills, So Go The Rawlingses, Come Election 2012!!!

I just finished reading the propaganda piece published by one Berrick Namburr, described as campaign coordinator for Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, and could barely restrain myself from punching out the screen of my computer monitor. To say the least, the Konadu propaganda piece is nothing short of an eyesore. It also unremittingly insults the intelligence of Ghanaians for Mrs. Rawlings and her husband, former strongman cum former President Jerry John Rawlings, to be now telling Ghanaians that the very candidate, Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills, whom the couple staunchly and hermetically backed for three electoral seasons is, after all, a veritable house-of-cards (See “Nana Konadu Represents the Will of the People” Ghanaweb.com 5/27/11).

On the preceding score, of course, the unmistakable reference is to Mr. Rawlings’ infamous Swedru Declaration, during whose unfortunate pronouncement the retired Ghanaian strongman insisted on the singular candidacy of the now-President Mills as admitting of no other alternative, whatsoever! In other words, in the intransigent opinion of the couple, devoid of the indelible candidacy of the now-President John Evans Atta-Mills, the now-ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) was peremptorily prohibited from fielding any other presidential candidate or nominee.

What the foregoing means is that the credibility of Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings is inescapably predicated upon both the credibility and administrative competence, or the abject lack thereof, of President John Evans Atta-Mills. Consequently, the Rawlingses ought to bear equal responsibility and blame for what the Rawlingses themselves now, rather curiously, perceive to be the abject incompetence of the man that the couple themselves handpicked and for three consecutive electoral seasons imposed on the members of the so-called National Democratic Congress, and also attempted to impose on the Ghanaian electorate at large.

Needless to say, this is what “Probity, Accountability, Freedom and Justice” are fundamentally about. Of course, I have stated time and time again, in both this column and elsewhere, that Indemnity Clause or not, Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings ought to be rounded up and vigorously prosecuted for deliberately laying waster to our collective Ghanaian development and destiny for more than a generation, and also for self-righteously and unconscionably continuing to flagrantly disturb the otherwise peaceful climate of our fledgling, albeit salutary, democratic culture.

In the propaganda piece signed by Berrick Namburr, and it is not clear to me whether “Berrick” is the name of a human male or female Ghanaian, the campaign coordinator of Mrs. Rawlings makes it crystal clear that rather than have their hitherto pet ward pursue a democratic agenda of national development, the couple, had anticipated an Atta-Mills administration to be one that was resolutely marked by unremitting vendetta and rank mayhem from its outset, perhaps even one that studiously replicated the outright criminal and barbaric events of June 1979 and December 1981.

To the foregoing effect, this is what Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings’ own campaign coordinator has to say: “All discerning Ghanaians have appreciated the former President’s genuine concerns about the manner [in which the Atta-Mills] government has handled pending issues of criminality and corruption involving the past government. The agitations by footsoldiers across the length and breadth of the country were not elicited [provoked?] by Rawlings’ comments. They were spontaneous reactions borne by the failure of the Mills government to heed the voice of the men and women who supported NDC to victory in 2008/9.”

It goes without saying that Berrick Namburr’s brazen testimony, regarding the belligerent and bellicose mindset of the couple, eerily points to the certain imminence of a civil war in Ghana, if Mrs. Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings and her swashbuckling husband are allowed to have their way! And, needless to say, the intrepid exposure of such psychological propensity for the total and unrelenting destruction of bona fide Ghanaian citizens perceived by the couple to be their enemies, may well have sparked the gratuitous brouhaha that followed Nana Akufo-Addo’s equally resolute decision not to make members, supporters and sympathizers of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) become sitting-ducks and moving targets for NDC goon-squads and sharpshooters.

And so to the Rawlingses’ determination to taking Ghanaians back to the terror-charged AFRC/PNDC days of indescribable savagery, our simple riposte is “All-Die-Be-Die”! Indeed, the Rawlingses and their NDC collaborators may quite legitimately lay claim to having singularly invented the post-colonial Ghanaian language of political violence and raw intimidation. Still, the question of whether the Rawlingses and the NDC have an especial preserve, or monopoly, over the use of violence and intimidation in Fourth-Republican Ghanaian political culture remains to be seen.

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

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and the author of “The Obama Serenades” (Lulu.com, 2011). E-mail: [email protected].