By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph. D.
He did not actually lie, when the Lands and Natural Resources Minister-Designate publicly stated that Chairman Jerry John Rawlings had immensely contributed towards the widely alleged low voter turnout in the Volta Region during the 2016 general election (See “I Have Apologized to Rawlings for Lying Against Him – Amewu” Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/31/17). He did not lie because the acclaimed founding father of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) did quite a bit of bad-mouthing to significantly run down an already very poorly performing President John Dramani Mahama, a man whose selection as the third and final running-mate of the then-Candidate John Evans Atta-Mills the bloody couple had publicly and vehemently protested.
But, of course, the fact of the matter is that other than inordinately jam-packing his cabinet with Anlo-Ewes, the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress did a diddly little to materially develop the Volta Region. Instead, the NDC government concentrated on infrastructure building, largely road construction, to the near-total exclusion of such human-resource development as job creation and heavy investment in skills training, especially in the crucial sector of science and technology. The Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is expected to focus a significant portion of the nation’s capital resources on human-capacity enhancement, including such critical sectors of the economy as education, at all levels, health and agriculture, if the NPP expects to retain managerial residence of the Flagstaff House beyond a single John Peter Amewu term.
Needless to say, former President Rawlings may not have put a phone call through to Mr. John Peter Amewu, personally, but it goes without saying that publicly comparing President Mahama to the then-Candidate Akufo-Addo and vouching for the personal incorruptibility of the latter, vis-à-vis the pathological corruptibility of the former, essentially achieved the same laudable goal of creating considerable electoral disaffection for his former Communications Minister. At the end of the day, however, even as this writer has observed time and again, it is Chairman Rawlings who ought to be held squarely accountable for mentoring and promoting the unholy cause of the thoroughgoing corrupt and mediocre key operatives of the National Democratic Congress.
The NDC Abongo Boys on the Parliamentary Appointments Committee (PAC) are not doing their party and themselves any good, by cynically performing the dubious litmus test of having the Akufo-Addo cabinet appointees expediently indemnify the lost and decidedly irrecoverable integrity of such NDC political thugs and robber barons as Messrs. Mahama and Rawlings. May I also take this prime opportunity to heartily congratulate Dr. Archibald Letsa, the staunch Akufo-Addo loyalist and former Vice-Chairman of the Volta Regional Branch of the New Patriotic Party. Dr. Letsa was my senior at St. Peter’s Secondary School (PERSCO) in the mid-1970s. He was a well-respected personality even back then, and his great future leadership prospects were never in doubt, especially when one also reckoned the fact that his own father, Dr. Letsa, Sr., was the Chief Physician of the Atibie Hospital and the Okwawu District Medical Director.
I expect President Akufo-Addo to conciliatorily overlook scandalous NDC political biases and magnanimously reach out to appoint more professionally and administratively qualified Volta-descended citizens, irrespective of ethnicity and cultural and religious backgrounds into his government.
*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
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