APPOINTMENT OF TWO NPP ACTIVISTS INTO EC: Akufo-Addo must not be emboldened to think Ghanaians are milksops.

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President Akufo-Addo without recourse to the dangers to the nation recently appointed two known New Patriotic Party [NPP] stalwarts and aficionados into Ghana’s independent electoral commission [EC]. Dissuasions upon dissuasions had been wriggled through the bureaucratic bottleneck to have the 79 years old Ghanaian leader withdraw these obnoxious appointments, but to no avail.  The opposition National Democratic Congress [NDC] petitioned Council of State to advise the president appropriately on this cardinal political sin. Coalition of Domestic Election Observers [CODEO] admonished Dr. Peter Appiah-hene and Hajia Salima Ahmed Tijani to resign but they seemed unmoved. Akufo-Addo also remained unperturbed about the political havoc the aforesaid appointments could wreak on the nation. NPP over the years have pampered President Akufo-Addo to psychologically think that all his party members are coward. His intraparty actions have been a far cry from democracy. Mr. Akufo-Addo is now emboldened to wrongly believe that Ghanaians are cowards.

President Akufo-Addo is on the brink of committing political suicide by conflating his intraparty undemocratic ideals into national party politics. NPP presidential hopeful, Kennedy Agyapong is on record to have said that Akufo-Addo and his henchmen have threatened to collapse his enviable businesses if he continues his presidential ambition within NPP. Akufo-Addo himself was spotted at Fomena constituency in the lead-up to the 2020 elections saying he can not work with the independent candidate who heretofore refrained from kowtowing to his [Akufo-Addo’s] undemocratic whims and caprices. What Nana Akufo-Addo has forgotten is that sovereignty resides in the people, not one great man.

In his letter to Bishop Creighton on April 5, 1887, English historian, John Emerich Edward Dalber-Acton, better known as Lord Acton, coined a famous dictum: “Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely. This letter was officially published in 1907 as part of Lord Acton’s work entitled, Historical Essays and Studies. To Lord Acton, great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority. Furthermore, when they superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than the office sanctifies the holden of it.

Acton is implying that powerful people shouldn’t just excuse themselves from restrictions placed on others. Their power doesn’t make them somewhat morally superior and repository of all knowledge as the contrary tends to be the case. Power empowers people in authority to commit and get away with horrible atrocities. Lord Acton cited the Spanish Inquisition [1478 -1834] and the execution of Mary Queen of Scots [1587] as examples.

The Holy Office of Inquisition was a court institution to curb heresy in Spain, but practically destined to consolidate the power of monarchical absolutism in the kingdom of Spain. Its loutish and brutish methods led to widespread death and suffering in Spain.  Mary Queen of Scots was executed because he was found guilty of plotting the assassination of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.

President Akufo-Addo must be goaded to behave like a statesman. He must stop his intransigent posture of turning EC into an NPP annex.  Akufo-Addo must be grateful to God for the opportunity to govern a great country like Ghana.  As erstwhile United State Supreme Court judge, Oliver Wendell Holmes observed “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”  Akufu-Addo’s thought of gradually making EC NPP annex is not desirable.  All well-meaning Ghanaians must come together and force the withdrawal of these party men from the EC. Nobody will support EC and Akufo-Addo to destabilize Ghana. God Bless Our Homeland Ghana.

Nana Yaw Osei, Ph.D., Minnesota, USA

N_yawosei@hotmail.com

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