Folks, I will be blunt to damn the NDC leaders for being either grossly incompetent or for being plainly mischievous by not doing what will position the party properly to knock the super-duper incompetent Akufo-Addo government out of power at Election 2020.
Having already written an opinion piece to say that the momentum in the swing of political favour has suddenly shifted to the NDC just because Team Akufo-Addo is wobbling, fumbling, and bumbling to lose the goodwill that ended Mahama’s rule, I am more than disappointed by the lackadaisical manner in which there NDC is doing things to lose traction.
I am poised to say more to suggest that the NDC seems to be quickly losing that momentum because of inaction and plain lousiness, clumsiness, and laziness at many levels, whether internally or outside its own confines. I will explain my claim.
Two major occurrences give me the locus. First comes the injunction imposed on the party by an Accra high Court, which has virtually stalled efforts at electing the flag bearer of the party for Election 2020.
Second is the horrible happenings during the referendum on the creation of six new regiond that the NDC has not vigorously reacted to for Ghanaians to know what it has up its sleeves, even as Akufo-Addo praises such irregularities to the high heavens as the success achieved by Jean Mensa, a known NPP buff serving as the Chair of the Electoral Commission.
Folks, let no holds be barred. The injunction imposed on the NDC by the Accra High Court has virtually brought the NDC to its knees as we can see. There is no more vibrancy in the campaigns of the contenders for the flagbearership; neither is there anything going on to prove that the party is focused on its timetable as its constitution prescribes fir the choice of its presidential candidate within a specific time frame before the general elections.
I have read somewhere that the NDC leaders referred the court’s injunction to the party’s lawyers to act on. NONSENSE, especially when nothing has emerged so far to prove that they are doing what the party’s followers expect so the boat is not rocked by those seeking to destabilize the NDC and prevent it from achieving its electoral objectives.
At this point, it is pertinent to ask whether the NDC has a team of competent and reliable lawyers to fight its cause. Records show that all those (such as the Amalibas, etc.) haven’t accomplished anything to give the party the leverage that it needs to outdo the NPP. Instead, they have staked their own political ambitions to become MPs and flopped.
On the other hand, the NPP has vigorously and (in some instances) unscrupulously pursued its cause, using its array of lawyers to advantage, even if gossiping fingers suggest their manipulation of the legal regime as such. What is it that empowers them to do so but disempowers those in the NDC camp?
Is the NDC so bereft of legal brains that it can’t fight its way out in this instance of the injunction?
HORRIBLE, especially when this injunction is disrupting the process toward electing the flag bearer within the timetable set up so the party can do serious political mobilization.
The immediate negative impact of this injunction is that it has stalled the otherwise interesting campaigns by the various aspirants, reducing happenings to a lousy state of uncertainty. Virtually, the campaigns have ground to a halt. Too bad!!
It is not as if nothing can be done to overturn this injunction. All it will take is to put the acts together and move on to turn the table (even though apprehensions still exist on what exactly will influence the decisions of the presiding judges—proper legal arguments or mere bags of rice, tubers of yam, strings of bleating “Billy goats” or a series of massage sessions by soft-bodied women at the parlour—thanks to Anas Aremeyaw Anas’ expose on the corruption in the Ghanaian judiciary). So much for this aspect.
Let’s turn to the NDC leaders’ objectionable silence on the rot that characterized the referendum on creation of new regions, which Akufo-Addo is set on using for poli6cal advantage.
Much publicity has been given to the malpractices, which ordinary NDC activists and civil society organizations vociferously condemned because it smacked of what may characterize Election 2020.
Nothing from the NDC leaders despite all the ugly noise that they had made about happenings at Election 2016 that shot the NDC out of power. What we saw at this referendum is a dress rehearsal for Election 2020, which explains why the stony silence on the part of the NDC leadership- is shocking.
How weak can’t they be this way? It is not as if the NPP under Akufo-Addo (or Kufuor before him) has any better stratagems or strategies for solving Ghana’s problems of under-development. What ensued under Kufuor and is now being replicated under Akufo-Addo is clearly a mere “copy-cat business”, which can be summed up as “elimination by substitution” (seeing what didn’t work well under an NDC government and tweaking things to present a shadow version as if it’s an original strategy for solving problems. We know the impact.
Akufo-Addo has so far not introduced anything original (except the building of a national cathedral at the expense of the tax payer), which makes him the butt of ridicule. But the truth about his manner of governing is that he is fast creating structures to use to perpetrate and perpetuate his agenda, something the NDC isn’t able to comprehend so it can put in place measures to counteract such moves.
In effect, the NDC seems to be recoiling into its shell instead of sticking its neck out to bite hard. Happenings under Akufo-Addo give it the advantage to strike first, but it is losing that chance. Why so? (Because of the treachery of the Rawlingses or the inadequacies of the party’s own leaders?)
Folks, let me say pointedly clear here that the fact that the NDC succeeded in electing new officers (or retaining the Asiedu-Nketiahs and Co. in office) doesn’t add anything new to the NDC’s political armada and strategies for defeating the NPP at Election 2020 or beyond.
If what is unfolding now is anything to go by, I can easily and quickly say that the NDC won’t go anywhere beyond its national , regional, and constituency offices to be in power. What is unfolding calls for decisive action, not the ridiculous comments from its leaders as if such comments will unwind the clock and help the NDC regain public good will. The battle ahead is tough and must be prepared for.
Those who know how to do things should rise above pettiness and behave properly. otherwise, the chickens will be counted before they are hatched—and there will be no hatching, m after all.
Given the mess that Akufo-Addo has plunged Ghana into in just two years of his rule, Ghanaians will not regret for returning the NDC to power; but they won’t do so unless given firm assurances that what made them reject it at Election 2016 has been exorcized for the good of Ghana. My take!!