The Mantse Agboena Madness

Written by Manasseh Azure Awuni, March 2012

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) was the first to showcase how hollow the Ghanaian politician can be. Mantse Agboena, where the party held its first main rally ahead of the 2012 elections, is just outside the palace of the chief of James Town. In fact, that is the ceremonial ground of the James Town Mantse, but holding a public event outside a chief’s palace did not remind these politicians that civility is still a cherished value in the Ghanaian society.

The NPP were very disappointing. They seemed not to have the faintest clue on how to take advantage of the turmoil in the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC). The NDC is facing, perhaps, its greatest challenge in the party’s history. In recent political history of Ghana, it is the most injured political party going into an electoral battle. Greed and the insatiable quest to outdo one another in control of the party have left the party suffering from serious internal bleeding, though some of them are quick to downplay it as a normal disagreement within every human institution.

As a formidable opposition that is hungry to recapture power, the NPP could have concentrated on what they could do better than the NDC, why Ghanaians should see them as an alternative, instead of mounting the platform to insult, vilify and defame their opponents. Some of them openly insulted the President of the Republic, and those insults would later be splashed on the front pages of tabloids and ignite useless and unintellectual debate on radio and television.

Sometimes our politicians take us for granted because they don’t feel obliged to tell us what we need to know when they mount campaign platforms. It is perhaps the reason why Nana Akufo-Addo was caught fumbling when he appeared on Stephen Sucker’s Hard Talk on the BBC. Otherwise how would he not know how much the free senior high school programme he promised would cost when he campaigned with the same policy in 2008?

I cannot tell whether it was mere coincidence  that the NDC also chose Mantse Agboena  as the venue for their first rally ahead of the 2012 elections or it was a deliberate attempt to use the same venue to showcase a bigger  crowd than the NPP. What I can say, for a fact, however, is that the NDC rally was a re-enactment of the NPP’s mess some three weeks ago. It was like the same crowd and the same speakers, but this time in different colours and shades.

I was not surprised that they adopted the same format. The NPP and NDC are tarred with the same brush. What shocked me was President Mills’ address.

The President, who is also the NDC’s flag bearer, sat through and listened to his party leaders, ministers and MPs and parliamentary candidates insult and vilify with impunity. When it was his turn to address the audience, he said that what would become the headlines: “Those who have nothing to show for their existence and for their life on this earth will only resort to two things – lies and insults.”

Well, if the President meant what he said – and he did – everybody was sure he was directing that statement at the opposition NPP. But if his party men and women who appeared so intoxicated with the crowd really thought through the president’s statement and what they had done, they would have felt insulted that they had nothing to show for their lives and existence on earth.

Take, for instance, the NDC’s General Secretary, Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketia. His remark about why the Special Forces were created was very thoughtless and unfortunate, to say the least. Any intelligent person who listened to him would conclude that the Special Forces were created by the government to deal with opposition forces who misbehaved during the elections. This does not portend well for the peace of the nation.

Issues of security should be left to the security agencies. Why they are formed and how they will operate should be left out of the political platform because both NDC and NPP supporters are to blame for the past election violence. Akufo-Addo’s unfortunate all-die-be-die comment was cited by Asiedu-Nketia but the fact is that some NDC members also indulged in violent acts in previous elections.

Mr. Asiedu Nketia’s second and last issue he addressed before thanking the enthusiastic audience was the allegation that the NPP flag bearer, Nana Akufo Addo urinated on a mosque in the Northern Region, which he (Asiedu-Nketia) likened to the mad man in the public service TV ad against indiscipline some years back. He left the podium very satisfied, but he did not tell the voter why his party should be retained in government.

Is that not a clear case of “those who have nothing to show for their existence and for their life on this earth will only resort to two things – lies and insults?”

A deputy finance minister and former national propaganda secretary of the NDC, Mr. Fiifi Kwettey, decided to give figures to back his claim that the NDC had done better than the NPP. But he could not leave the stage until he told everybody that the opposition party was seeking power because they wanted to deal in cocaine. The minister of state said this on a programme that was aired live to millions across the country and the world.

The most disappointing, however, were the parliamentary candidates in the Greater Accra Region who were introduced. They were given brief moments to say something. On an enlightened campaign platform, this is the moment to say something that will stick with the voter. But almost all of them decided to sing. Ras Mubarak, Parliamentary candidate for Ablekuma North, made sense when he reminded the party about Vice President John Mahama’s “Tika, Taka and Gangale,” the story of unity. This should have been the worry of the party, especially when the wife of the party’s founder is rumoured to be breaking away to form her own party.

The parliamentary candidate for Ablekuma South and Minister for Information, Mr Fritz Baffour, was the most shocking of all. He mounted the platform and instructed the audience: “When I say heiiiii, respond heiiii! When I say heiiii for the third time, respond ABODAM!”

Abodam, in Akan means madness. That is, perhaps, the most apt description of what transpired at Mantse Agboena, when the NPP and NDC took turns to tell Ghanaians why we should elect them into office.

Political madness!