Sunday, October 23, 2011
"Nana Addo Dankwah Leads President Mills"?
Joy 99.7 FM Facebook
Lydia Nuamah
Nana Akyea Mensah:
Genuine dreams invade our sleep uninvited. As soon as we wake-up, the make-believe of the dreamland is over. Invented dreams work to the contrary. These are self-inflicted injuries to objectivity, and those who depend on this swim with the ...fins of lead. This is not the first time that this affliction is visiting the NPP. We all know about the 2008 Presidential campaign and Akufo-Addo's "One-Touch!" slogan, and what happened at the end of the day!
What makes this even more hollow and ridiculous was the fact that Akufo-Addo paid a famous pollster thousands of dollars, only to be told the truth that he was going to lose the elections because Atta-Mills was more popular than him! Thus it was that whilst Akufo-Addo was all over the place shouting "One touch! One touch!", he knew secretly that he was going to lose! These cooked-up figures are nothing but the only miserable excuse they want to use to complain about their inevitable defeat in the elections.
Akufo-Addo refused to concede defeat, even though he knew in advance that he was going to lose, and he actually ridiculously blamed his defeat on the intimidation of millions of his fans in the Volta Region of all places, who were not allowed to vote! In the lead up to the Sunyani NDC congress which overwhelmingly elected President Atta-Mills as the as the party's flag-bearer, Akufo-Addo's newspaper, the Statesman predicted a 75% win for President Mills which they interpreted to be "a vote of no confidence" in the Mills Administration.
The news that "President John Mills has won the NDC's National Delegates' Congress in Sunyani by a whooping 96.09% as against Nana Konadu's 3.01%", is obviously good news for some of us, but not all of us. For the Akufo-Addo camp, this was a rude shock. They were predicting 75% for Professor Mills and explaining that to mean a vote of no confidence by his own party. I can already see President Mills being sworn in for a second time. It gives the Mills campaign a boost that even the Akufo-Addo camp will find very difficult to deny.
In the days leading to the Congress, Akufo Addo's Statesman published an article in which they sought to cast doubts on the obvious:
"Surveys, interviews, analyses and information gathered by the New Statesman indicate that President John Evans Atta Mills has been gripped by serious panic following the last minute realization that tomorrow’s presidential nomination of his party may not after all result in the kind of landslide victory he had been made to believe by his GAME (Get Atta Mills Endorsed) campaign team."
We now have something concrete to chew on concerning their so-called "surveys, interviews, analyses and information gathered by the New Statesman"! They could not have been more ridiculous:
"President Mills is said to be particularly worried by the fact that the GAME plan to antagonize and isolate former President Rawlings and his wife has angered many constituency delegates." The New Statesman went on, "Even more worrying for the President is the fact that for two years now his only challenger, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, cleverly maintained a close, caring and intimate contact with a sizeable majority of the ruling party’s constituency officers, of whom 1,433 (out of 1,900 total delegates) voted for her in Tamale on 17 January 2010 as NDC Vice Chairperson, a position from which she resigned recently to contest for the flagbearership."
I repeat the results for an effective comparison:
"President Mills polled a whopping 2,771 votes against Nana Agyemang Rawling's 90 votes.
President Mills took the lead in all ten regions of the country.
President Mill's vote represents 96.7% of the total votes cast, whilst Nana Konadu's votes represents a total of 3.14%."
The New Statesman also predicted tension and violence, but the entire even passed off in a festive mood:
"There are growing concerns that the insults, intimidation, threats, harassment and violence, including the Kumasi shooting, that have blighted the short campaign, could all come to a head at the Sunyani congress.
Officially more than 1,500 police personnel have been deployed to the Brong Ahafo capital. The NDC has also made arrangements for about 2,000 security personnel for the 3-day congress, in addition to the about 1,800 “Azorka Boys” who are storming Sunyani today.
There are concerns from the Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings camp that the security personnel are all part of the GAME plan to put their fear of the ballot (if not the bullet) into FONKAR. But, that appears not to be shaking FONKAR."
It is a great shame to our detractors that this congress has come off smoothly and the NDC has reposed an overwhelming confidence in the President. We must hit the ground running for them to know what running is! The congress has reduced the Rawlingses into an insignificant political nuisance which have no impact on the party. As I wrote earlier, "NDC should go ahead and elect President Mills to continue the good work he has started. There should be no worries about an open foe. The NPP has a hidden one!"
At the end of the day the NPP has more to lose from the "Agenda 2016" menace than the NDC has to lose from the Rawlingses threat. The percentage of constituency under Alan Cash command is far greater than the percentage as demonstrated in the vote. The dynamics do not bode well for the NPP, also because there is a frontal and direct contradictions between the Alan Cash "Agenda 2016" and the Akufo-Addo "Victory 2012".
"A wolf may eat a sheep now and then,
But thousands are killed by men,
An open foe may prove a curse,
But a pretended friend is worse"!
The NDC now has the "open foe" under control, but can the NPP say the same thing about their "pretended friends"? Whilst the Rawlingses are already talking of forming another political party, with preferably, the NDC logo, Akufo-Addo recently included Alan Kyeremanten in his campaign team, despite the visceral hatred of the Alan Cash "Agenda 2016" underground commandos. Alan Cash believes strongly that 2016 is his time, given to him by God himself. The Akufo-Addo "Victory 2012" is a threat to this "God-given" hope of Alan Cash, as Akufo-Addo could extend his political expiring date beyond 2012 to two terms ending in 2020, and making nonsense of the "Agenda 2016"!
Attention! There is a good reason why this is not in the public domain. This shall never be an operation that will be played out in the open. Both sides have come to the selfish conclusion that they need a strong façade of unity, whether 2012 or 2016, if they are to make any impact. Thus publicly they are friends! They have agreed to disagree. They tell each other, "if you are pretending to be a friend, we shall also pretend to be friends!" This is a house irrevocably divided against each other as the Ashanti Region is the strongest base of the party, the "Agenda 2016" which needs a defeat of Akufo-Addo, to spring into action, gives the NDC a fortuitous advantage even if the Rawlingses were to break away from the NDC.
It would be worse than inordinate ambition if they did. At least, the CPP which is always first at the bottom, can have something to beat! What every decent citizen expects from the Rawlingses is a magnanimous acceptance of defeat and recoiling into their shells or crawl away and hide under their respective stones. They can now positively throw their weight behind the voices of their own people, or at least stop themselves from being on the way. The message is clear: they are going to change or they will be changed.
With the NPP as no-match, I think we are entering into this campaign with a strong foot forward.
Cheers to all of you!
We shall overcome!
Forward Ever! Backwards Never!!!
Nana Akyea Mensah, The Odikro.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Comment: Akufo-Addo Will Never Accept Defeat!
“The odds are againstNDC in 2012 -KNUST Lecturer”
The odds are againstNDC in 2012 -KNUST Lecturer
From Issah Alhassan, Kumasi.
Johnson Asiedu Nketia-NDC General Secretary
A LECTURER at the Political Science Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology(KNUST), Mr. Amakye Boateng has warned that the success or otherwise of next year’s crucial elections would largely depend on the government’s willingness and commitment towards free, fair and transparent polls.
Asserting that the odds would be against the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in December 2012, the KNUST Lecturer cautioned that the ruling party would do everything possible to hold on to power, and that this could trigger unlikely circumstances, if care is not taken.
Mr. Amakye observed that unfolding circumstances cast bad shadows on the electoral fortunes of the NDC, and this he said, would make the ruling party adopt certain unorthodox means in order to maintain power. He said, this situation, coupled with the lackadaisical attitude of the Electoral Commission (EC), should give Ghanaians course to worry. Read more
MY COMMENT:
If it comes to a question of who is more desperate than the other, the answer cannot be an exhaustive one if we forget the obvious political expiring date ticking at the back of Akufo-Addo. We know this is his last chance. We also know that he is a sore-loser. He did it to Kufour in 2000. He did it to President Mills in 2009, and his "all die be die!" chants, do little to calm the impression that he is the more desperate one.
Akufo-Addo was not surprised that he lost the 2008 Presidential elections. He had already been warned about it by Professor Larry Gibson in advance! Yet he was able to pretend that he could have won if his "numerous" supporters in the Volta Region had been allowed to vote! I think there is no need to wait for Akufo-Addo to lose to find out whether or not he is going to accept the results. I think he is automatically going to cry foul, even though his chances this time are even slimmer than the last time around!
From their own admissions, the Akufo-Addo campaign is not going well at all. In his latest article, "Negative Campaign In Ghana And Lessons From .....", Feature Article of Saturday, 8 October 2011, Otchere-Darko, Gabby Asare, the author, who is also the Executive Director of the Akufo-Addo PR-team known as "the Danquah Institute" admits that the NDC deserves "some credit for even succeeding in putting the opposition on the defensive much of the time. "
Akufo-Addo's problems with the crucial Ashanti vote which can make or break is far from resolved. Apparently the "Agenda 2016" Team led by Kufour and Allan Cash is even more optimistic and better organized than the "Victory 2012" in the Ashanti Region. It is the group which controls the Ashanti Region that will decide the winner.
So far, it seems the "Agenda 2016" are not prepared to wait to 2020 before they taste the power that they see as inevitably coming their way in 2016! Having had some of them beaten up for simply showing up at Victory 2012 circles, they need a good convincing to play ball. The NPP is clearly a house divided against itself, even though neither side wants to admit that publicly for obvious reasons.
The chances of Akufo-Addo winning are very slim indeed. He is going into this campaign as the under-dog. And he needs to show some statesmanship at the twilight of his retirement, and graciously accept his defeat. Scheming troubles to attract "the international community" to come and bomb us and impose a losing candidate on Ghana is what I dread! This is why it is important that the narrative of Mr. Amakye Boateng must not go unchallenged.
Forward Ever! Backward Never!!!
Friday, October 7, 2011
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