Kwabena Amikaketo sat in his favourite chair on his balcony, viewing the setting sun which was making way for the shadows to grow longer and soon cover his part of the world like a dark blanket.
That evening, his mind was in amazement as he sat still pensively contemplating issues that were going on within the National Democratic Congress (NDC). A party which is inwardly appearing to disregard the Ewe people, but outwardly seen storming the Volta Region and showing solidarity about something about the registration of voters that is becoming a mirage; a party that claims it is the most peaceful, but is beating war drums and inciting people to war; a party that has finally discovered the true Rawlings, its Founder, and recorded such in a book, and a party whose candidate is praising his main opponent and is also confused about facts.
Ethnocentrism, the Bedrock of NDC? Kwabena just smiled at how the NDC is revealing its true nature as the most ethnocentric institution in Ghana. He reflected on how during the founding of this party, its founder instilled into the minds of the Voltarians and Dangbes that the New Patriotic Party was a party of Asantes who do not like them. He certainly might have referred to Victor Owusu’s “inward-looking” statement in Parliament directed at the Ewes, after Dr Agama of the NAL made a very serious ethnocentric remark about Prime Minister Busia.
Rawlings, earlier in June 1979, ordered the execution of mostly Akan generals and former heads of state for some reasons, among others, for overthrowing civil governments, but he left out Ankrah, Harlley, Agbo and Serlomey. He later overthrew a civilian government, and yet he wants his crime to be justified and glorified.
Rawlings made sure big businesses owned by Asantes like Appiah-Menkah, Dr Safo Adu and Kwabena Darko collapsed. An Asante’s medium scale business called Trafalgar Restaurant, which was located on the Ring Road Central, near Harry Zakour’s Bus Stop, and which was attracting more customers due to its more quality food, was relocated to the Holy Gardens area, where it collapsed. And an up and coming Asante businessman’s booming A-Life Supermarket chain was led into bankruptcy by some banking officials in the Rawlings’ era. Today, all giant retail shops are owned by non-Ghanaians. Ethnocentrism must allow the Ghanaian economy to go down or even collapse if Asantes/Akans are involved and in the lead.
The deep hatred of Asantes/Akans by the core NDC was revealed during the first Parliament of the Fourth Republic, when Hon Dr Akosah, Member of Parliament (MP) for Mampong Ashanti, put up a private motion in the House that the misguided idea upheld by most Ghanaians that all successful Asantes made it their through criminal and evil ways, was not factual but ethnocentric and needed to be corrected. He was rather accused of ethnicity by his own NDC and made redundant in the party.
The silence of the inland Akans in the NDC rather made way for ethnocentrism to sprout in the most unlikely areas in that party. Three strong ethnic caucuses sprang up; they were the Ewe Caucus, which maintains that the NDC belongs to them because it is their son’s (Rawlings’) party. Then the amalgamation of Northern Ethnic Groups who have been loyal to Rawlings, and finally, the Coastal Akan Group (Fante) who stand up tall and proud to be associated with the NDC. Two ethnic groups who are powerful in their own right by the votes they donate to the NDC, but are effectively kept out, are the Gas and Dangbes of Greater Accra. It is as if they count for nothing.
As the Inland Akans in the NDC continued to respect themselves, ethnocentricism started growing dangerously in that party. Fortunately, it has nothing to do with the Asantes. The Coastal Akans have decided to grab and control the party, and damn the consequences. Who or whatever made Jerry John to pick Fantes as running mates, and eventually vice presidents, worked against the Ewe dominance in the NDC.
But, wait, in an interview, Rawlings said he thought John Evans Atta Mills (JEAM) was a Ga when he picked him as a running mate, maybe the Fante gods are to blame.
JEAM went on to pick running mates from the North on three occasions, the last eventually became vice president and president, in the person of H.E. John Dramani Mahama. On the two occasions that John Mahama picked running mates, he decided to pick from the Fante.
Long before his second choice of running mate, the ethnocentric epidemic in the NDC was getting to a pandemic status, as happened when the national executives were chosen to lead the party. The NDC decided against the any Ewe holding themselves in powerful positions in the party. The Ewes went fasting and praying and hoping for the running mate slot to land on their laps, but that also eluded them, and they had to go to bed early and have nightmares when John Mahama picked another Fante as his running mate. Not to take things lying low, some top Ewes in the party sounded warnings and protested against the choice of Naana Opoku-Agyeman and demanded she be replaced. Currently, there is powerful ethnocentric lava boiling from within, waiting for the opportunity to tear open the surface and gush out like a volcano to destroy everything in the party.
This self destructive mode within the NDC is generating from the ambition of the Coastal Akans to become the owners and power brokers. Their immediate threat is the Ewes, whose region has consistently endorsed the NDC in all seven elections since 1992, while the Coastal Akans were able to secure only four victories out of seven for that party.
The Coastal Akans, in full determination to make the NDC their own, have decided to attack the man who made almost all Ewes join and belong to the NDC, the man Jerry John Rawlings. Of course, he has been behaving rather strangely of late, putting his loyalty to the NDC in question. First he attacked JEAM when he was president, as if they do not belong to the same party; then today he is a good friend of H.E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, someone he once called a cocaine dealer and an enemy of the people, but now praising him as the best choice for Ghana, and lately Rawlings confessed that in the last elections he voted for the National Democratic Party (NDP), his wife’s party. These could have serious setbacks for the NDC in an election year.
So one Fante man and staunch NDC member, Prof Ahwoi, decided to put on record the true conduct and manners of Jerry John Rawlings, and market the book at a time when elections were four months away. Maybe he intended to remove Rawlings from the picture so that a new face NDC will face the stronger NPP.
He came out with things he experienced while working with Rawlings; some things we thought were rumours, having been confirmed in his book. The Ewe god has been stripped low and treated with contempt. But if it even means to surrender their birthright and heritage in the NDC, the Ewes will never sacrifice H.E. Jerry John Rawlings, who they installed twice as chief by the Anlo Traditional Council, first as Togbui Xornametor on Saturday July 3, 1999 at Atakple, and then as Togbui Nutifafaga on October 29, 2016 at Tadzewu.
The Ewes fought back; first was Dan Agbodakpi, and then a section of Ewe youth and elders who came out to deny and attempt to defend the bad things said about their lord and god in the book. To them, Rawlings never did wrong, and even any evil conducted by him was what the gods had ordained to happen to man. The ethnic battle lines have been drawn, and one does not know when it will end, for soon, the Fantes will be added to the Asantes, as those born to wreck the lives of Ewes.
Kwabena Amikaketo started wondering how the Ewes will be now considering the arm of solidarity extended to them by non-Ewe NDC leaders, especially Akans, when they were made to believe that the NPP wanted to disenfranchise them by way of putting up the compilation of a new voters’ register, and going ahead to turn their towns and villages into army camps.
The NDC’s current show of disregarding Ewes, by first making sure that no Ewe became a national executive member, denying them the running mate position, and now demonising their Rawlings, will be deeply contested against the pride of the common Ewe when he steps out on December 7, 2020 to vote. Will it be business as usual by continuing to sacrifice for an institution which uses and abuses them, or will it claim independence by voting for and reconciling with the enemy, NPP?
Mahama Jams The Campaign: Kwabena Amikaketo reflected in amusement at what came out of the flagbearer of the NDC, H.E. John Dramani Mahama. How he could have come with words to suggest he is endorsing an eight year rule for President Nana Akufo-Addo can only be a prophecy from God Himself. Indeed, the “Battle is the Lords.” Is John Mahama admitting that all the good deeds Nana Addo has done could only be possible in eight years, and not three and a half?
In deep contemplation, Kwabena remembered an NDC person telling him that their party knows too well they cannot win the 2020 elections, but they are only hoping to win more seats to close the gap in Parliament, so that whenever there is something important from the government to vote on, they will have the numbers to torpedo the president’s agenda and make NPP unpopular for them to win in 2024 hands down.
For even if with a sixty-three member gap, the NDC could have pulled the vote on the C.I.126 to a tie if all its members had come to the House to vote, a lot could happen if the gap between them is about twenty-five.
So, Kwabena Amikaketo, in analysing events spewing out from the NDC, lamented that the only reason the opposition party has in attacking the current electoral procedures is to appear as a gallant loser in Election 2020, and beat their chests and claim that but for rigging they would have won the elections hands down.
When Kwabena heard Mahama declaring that the current NPP administration had done nothing to cut down the Covid-19 deaths, and that when he is elected president, he would lower the death rate, he asked whether the former president was indeed living on this planet.
Ghana is classified among the top fifteen nations in the world which are doing well in handling the Covid-19. This pandemic is new, and many nations, including the super powers, are not too sure as what to do to reduce its spread, let alone stop it. Currently, Ghana stands at the 51st most infected nation in the world, but also is among the nations with the lowest deaths and highest recovery rates. As at 1:30 pm on Sunday August 9, 2020, Ghana’s status was 41,003 recorded cases, with 2,458 (6.00%) active cases; 215 (0.52%) as deaths, and 38,330 (93.48%) recovered. Lacking in powerful and effective health facilities compared to some nations of the world, Ghana is, indeed, faring well. Even the United Kingdom has adopted some of our procedures.
Now can John Mahama stand up and tell us how he handled cholera cases in Ghana during his reign, especially in 2014, when over 28,000 cases were recorded, with 243 deaths? Cholera can be prevented and cured, and it is not an epidemic, more so it has been around in this country since the late 60s, and so we must be able to handle it by now. If he has the solutions to handle the Covid-19 pandemic, how patriotic is he to wait to come to power first before he implements them?
NDC and Academia: During the early Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) days, the most endangered species in Ghana included the people of academia. University workers and labourers were organised to revolt against the professors and lecturers, calling them good for nothing. And only recently, John Dumelo, in an interview, came out to say that the NDC does not believe in intellectuals and prefers dealing with ignorant, inexperienced people, above all things. Interestingly, today the party has picked a university don, an intellectual from academia, and the NDC members have suddenly started singing from a different hymn sheet, acknowledging everything academia.
As he rose to dinner, Kwabena Amikaketo prayed that this academic lady will not be ill-treated like how the Ewes in the NDC are been disregarded and ill-treated. He sighed, wondering when the Gas and the Dangbes, who give at least 78% of their votes to the NDC, will also be given a shinning spot in that party. NDC the way they go!
Hon Daniel Dugan
The post The Memoirs and Lamentations of Kwabena Amikaketo (8) NDC, and the way they are going appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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