He has demonstrated over the almost four-year-period that he ran the office of the General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) that his forte lies in brute verbal assault of opponents than the possession of the finesse that his predecessors once exhibited as a steady hallmark, whilst running that same office.
His name is Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, a.k.a Sir John.
In the run-up to the delegate congress of the NPP to elect new officers to run the party for the next four years, Sir John’s populist and comic stunt are fast fading off even with the people who he previously appealed to with such abusive mastery in native proverbs that go with linguistic alacrity; and so he has to adopt a new strategy,
In the run-up to the race for the NPP general secretary position, incumbent Sir John seems to be running against time; and in his desperate attempt to hold on to the plume position, his verbal arsenals are no longer epistles to Asiedu Nketia but against his internal party people, including ex-President Kufuor.
With that brute carved niche, Sir John is finding it difficult to switch overnight into the realm of substance and decency, because that has never been part of his making. In an attempt to recover the lost grounds, he’s gone into overdrive disparaging and vilifying his opponents.
The worst affected party in the Sir John’s virtuoso and wicked chicanery is Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, his closet contender in the NPP general secretary portfolio. Sir John is on record to have told some party delegates that Agyepong is such an arrogant brat that the moment he secures their mandate, he will leave them to their fate.
He is also exploiting the imaginary wedge that suggests that former President Kufuor is an avowed opponent of Nana Akufo-Addo and that the former president is in cohort with Kwabena Agyepong to derail or curtail the presidential ambition of Nana Addo in preference to the choice of the two gentlemen.
Sir John is heard on tape recording telling party delegates that former President Kufuor’s failure to attend the Supreme Court proceedings that run for eight months clearly is a manifestation of his stance against an Akufo-Addo presidency.
“You see Kufuor doesn’t care about the party, after all, he has made his money. All that he wants is to see Akufo-Addo losing so that he can come back to tell you that he told you Akufo-Addo cannot win the presidency and for that matter he is not worth being giving another chance to run as the presidential candidate of the NPP,” Sir John told the delegates.
He told the delegates that as general secretary, he has no official vehicle and that what he is using for his rounds is a rental or a hired car, adding that upon assumption of office, then party chairman Peter Mac Manu told him that he had given all the party’s vehicles to his wife and kids and there has none left for him the general secretary.
He describes Kennedy Agyapong as an arrogant fool who would apologise to the party’s disciplinary committee and go on air to insult and brag around, and disclosed to the delegates that for the past three years, he has been sleeping at a guest house.
Sir John’s wicked lies received rapid response from Kwabena Agyepong who last week had a press conference to dispel the Sir John orchestrated rumours making rounds. Although he was short of mentioning Sir John’s name, Today has it on authority that those lies were part of Sir John’s character assassination campaign.
In fact he is tying in his election fortune to the seeming popularity of Nana Akufo-Addo, using the 2012 NPP presidential candidate as bait to cash in on his supporters who are also delegates.
Another of the Sir John induced wicked campaign is that Kwabena Agyepong is being supported by some party big-wigs like former General Secretary, Nana Ohene Ntow. Today can state on authority that the rationale behind that slur campaign is that there is a top-hierarchy campaign against his candidature and that of Nana Addo.
Indeed Sir John’s desperation stems from the way and manner his tenure as General Secretary has reduced the once high-profile office into one lack of substance and to put it mildly a centre of comic relief. This is in contrast to the finesse and decency that was brought into the office by his predecessors like Dan Kwaku Botwe and Nana Ohene Ntow.
The two gentlemen were the master-brains of NPP’s triumphant victories in 2000 and 2004 and although their fore-bearer, Agyenim Boateng, failed to secure the NPP the presidency in 1992, he is remembered for setting a record decency in running the general secretary office of the NPP.
Indeed Dan Kwaku Botwe and Nana Ohene Ntow all blazed the decency trail set by the first General Secretary of the NPP, Agyenim Boateng, and that ensured that they delivered the presidency to the NPP on two occasions.
Nana Ohene Ntow might have lost his bid to score yet another victory for the NPP in 2008 elections, but that defeat was more of succumbing to what seems an emerging convention within Ghanaian body-politic that no political party is guaranteed a three-term office of 12 years than the incompetence of Nana Ohene Ntow.
Many NPP faithful(s) believe the 2012 election was NPP’s for the taking, but for the comic peripheral performance of their general secretary Sir John did fail to attract particularly floating voters into the fold of the NPP and would not ascribe to the so-called second stolen verdict position of the NPP in the 2012 elections.
The NPP’s first stolen verdict was in relation to the 1992 elections. After 20 years, the party again cried about what they perceived as naked thievery of the 2012 elections which outcome was contested by the NPP at the Supreme Court.
In the opinion of such NPP zealots, there is a time to test some of the electoral laws in the statute books and the immediate aftermath of the 2012 elections was that opportune time, with one of them adding “at least the conduct of the Supreme Court proceedings has opened our eyes to so many things and that will definitely strengthen our democracy in the coming years.”