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Swapping horses in midstream won’t
help the NDC
By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor
Thursday, November 26, 2015
Folks, I have read a news report headlined “Replace
'incompetent' Veep with Adjaho—V/R Group” and immediately
got angry beyond measure. According to the report, “A group
calling itself Volta Youth for Development, which claims to
be non-partisan, has issued a statement describing
Vice-President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur as an “incompetent”
deputy to President John Mahama, and called for his
replacement with Speaker of Parliament Edward Doe Adjaho.
Leader of the group, Prosper Fofo Ndekor said Tuesday that
President Mahama and the governing National Democratic
Congress (NDC) risk losing the 2016 general elections if the
former Governor of the Central Bank is retained as running
mate.” (See
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Replace-incompetent-Veep-with-Adjaho-V-R-Group-396617).
My immediate reaction was to insult Ndekor as the biggest
fool walking around. His is the highest level of inanity in
matters regarding the future of the NDC and should be
disregarded for a number of reasons:
1. This fluffy group has no constituency anywhere in the
Volta Region to warrant its being listened to. No one in the
Volta Region but Ndekor considers this group as worth
his/her bother. In other words, it is a group that should be
disregarded for all that it is and seeks to fight for.
2. The group’s agitation is motivated more by tribal
feelings than any serious intellectual assessment of the
role of the Vice President. What is the basis for their
characterizing Amissah-Arthur as “incompetent”? How have
they appraised his performance to jump to that conclusion
and to ask that he be replaced with Adjahoe?
3. What has been Adjahoe’s own performance as a politician
since he began doing national politics (not to mention the
local version)? Of course, he had been MP for the Ave-Avenor
(Akatsi) area for many years; but his long service can’t be
said to be sterling in terms of his performance. He hasn’t
done as well as his constituents would want him to, which
often led to agitations for his rejection during the
primaries. But he managed to sail through. And we all know
how politicians of his sort do things to serve their narrow
purposes.
4. A Speaker of Parliament, Adjahoe’s performance can’t be
said to be stupendous or that he has excelled to such an
extent as to be uplifted as is being mooted by Ndekor and
his amorphous group. Those who know Adjahoe will tell you
that he has the tendency to be autocratic and not as affable
as the President and his Vice are known to be. Adjaoe loves
power and if care is not taken, he will over-do things to
cause trouble for the NDC. I won’t go for him.
5. When then Vice President Mahama succeeded ex-President
Mills, he didn’t choose Amissah-Arthur as his Vice just
because he was a Fante or to please anybody with Fante
sentiments (although some rumours circulated to that
effect). He did so because he knew Ghana and the NDC had a
lot to gain from him. And he has proved it so far. So, why
toss him overboard just because of the ill-feelings of some
disgruntled elements who have too much time and too little
to do?
Back to my claim that the group’s agitation is purely
motivated by tribal sentiments. There has been a feeling
that because the Volta Region constitutes the political
reservoir of the NDC, it must be compensated with the Vice
Presidential slot. I have stood against this kind of porous
claim, clearly because I hate tribal politics, especially if
it is done at the expense of commonsense and good political
thinking. If Adjahoe is behind this agitation, he should
desist forthwith in order not to jeopardize his own
political future—whatever will be left of it by the time his
term as the Speaker of Parliament ends.
I challenge him to dissociate himself from this call by
Ndekor and his group for us to know that he is not
instigating them to embark on this useless venture. If he
fails to do so, I will revise my notes on him.
The NDC administration has believed in continuity since
Rawlings’ era and shouldn’t bow to any pressure to
complicate matters and erode its support base. President
Mahama has made it clear that for all these years that he
has known and worked with Amissah-Arthur, he will stick his
neck out to defend him as duty-conscious, hardworking,
disciplined, and whatever else that he admires. He recently
repeated that accolade and even sent Amissah-Arthur to pick
up and return his nomination form for him. He didn’t do so
because he saw Amissah-Arthur as a glorified messenger to be
sent on a fool’s errand and discarded when the mission is
accomplished; that is, when he (President Mahama) got the
nod of the NDC followers to contest Election 2016.
He did so with the full conviction that he respected and
regarded Amissah-Arthur as a trustworthy lieutenant with
whom to man the ship of state. The going may be tough but it
doesn’t mean jettisoning him just because a group of
ill-informed and ill-intentioned elements think that he is
“incompetent” (borrowing the NPP’s vacuous buzz-word for
political mischief).
I urge President Mahama to disregard agitations of this sort
and move on to Election 2016 with Amissah-Arthur, a
well-known technocrat, economist, and politician. He may not
have the kind of charisma that others have exploited to get
their bread buttered; but he has attributes that far
outweigh charisma. Those who know him will testify. I have
known him since he was the Deputy Secretary for Finance and
Economic Planning under Rawlings and will always respect him
for his professionalism and decorum. He is not the yapping
type, which may deceive ignorant people of Ndekor’s type to
misconstrue his political rhetoric or performance in office.
At this time in the preparations toward Election 2016, the
least that anybody can do to move the process forward should
be done. Those who think that the challenges facing the
government can be traced to the “incompetence” of Vice
President Amissah-Arthur should be ignored to stew in their
ignorance.
All things said and done, those advocating his replacement
with a female are equally mischievous. Take the empty talker
(Dr. Richard Amoako-Baah of the KNUST), for instance, who is
suggesting that President Mahama could consider substituting
Amissah-Arthur with a female, possibly Ms. Hannah Tetteh
(Minister of Foreign Affairs) or Mawuena Trebarh, CEO of the
Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC). I categorically
dismiss Dr. Amoako-Baah’s suggestion as irrelevant. He
should go and preach that poisonous message to Akufo-Addo
and his wobbling NPP team.
I support strongly the stance of a senior official at
development NGO ISODEC, Dr. Steve Manteaw, who has said that
the fact that the country is facing economic challenges does
not suggest Vice-President Amissah-Arthur is a poor
performer because the country's problems are not his
creation. His witty question underscores it all: "Who
changes a winning team?"
And as he elucidated, "The two of them (President Mahama and
Amissah Arthur) went for the contest in 2012 and won; and,
so, I don’t expect President Mahama to make a change. You
don’t fix it when it’s not broken.” Good observations.
Let it be known now and forever more that unlike other
situations where we heard of a constant friction between the
President and his Vice (whether between Rawlings and Kow
Nkensen Arkaah or Prof. Mills; whether between Kufuor and
Aliu Mahama; or the rumoured one between Prof. Mills and his
then Vice, Mahama), the relationship between President
Mahama and Vice President Amissah-Arthur has been more than
cordial and satisfactorily productive. Nothing has cropped
up for us to suspect that they have a frosty relationship
(mostly if there is a turf war in terms of
bread-and-butter—the spoils of office).
Vice President Amissah-Arthur is
not known to have offended anybody in the NDC to warrant his
being contemned and discarded. He is the gentleman that
Nature has made him. In performing his duties, he ensures
that he doesn’t step on toes unnecessarily just because he
is vested with power and authority. He is not known to have
over-extended himself to become a nuisance. So, why put him
on the line this way, Ndekor and Co.?
Claiming that he is not visible on the national scene is
porous. Vice President Amissah goes wherever he has to go to
do government business. He is very much visible in the
international scene too, unlike what happened under Kufuor
when Aliu Mahama was pinned to Ghana while Kufuor hogged all
the foreign trips.
In assessing the performance of Amissah-Arthur, one has to
consider a lot more than Ndekor and his group are doing. And
any honest assessment of his performance will reveal that he
remains an asset to President Mahama, the NDC, and Ghana.
Folks, I rest my case for now.
I shall return…
• E-mail: mjbokor@yahoo.com
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to continue the conversation.
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