GHANAIANS SIMPLY WANT CHANGE!

Quote: “ "The NDC is now engaged in concerted preparations for the Presidential run-off," Mr Danny Annang, the party's Greater Accra Regional Chairman told newsmen in Accra to commend the region for voting massively for the party in the December 7 Elections. The NDC obtained 52.1 percent of the valid votes cast in the Presidential as against 46.0 percent obtained by the NPP, whiles in the Parliamentary the NDC won 18 out of the 27 parliamentary seats in the region as against nine by the NPP.

In Election 2004 the NDC obtained 46.3 percent of the valid votes cast in the Presidential as against 51.9 percent obtained by the NPP whiles in the Parliamentary the NDC won eleven seats as against 16 by the NPP.” End of quotation from Ghana News Agency report, 13/1/08

Yes, Professor Atta Mills will indeed be elected as Ghana’s president on 28th December 2008, God willing - and if the National Democratic Congress (NDC) can act to prevent any rigging taking place on the day.

Their vigilance in all the polling stations across Ghana will ensure that the verdict of the people is not stolen on December 28, 2008 - and ensure their candidate’s victory.

There is no doubt that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has a fine candidate in Nana Akufo Addo and if they had selected him to be their party’s candidate for the presidency in the December 2000 election, perhaps he would have left a far better legacy for his party than the present incumbent has. Unfortunately for him, Nana Akufo Addo entered the fray, eight years too late.

The ordinary people of Ghana, who are so often taken for granted by the educated urban elites who rule them, have shown clearly that they are very discerning. They are a great deal far more sophisticated politically than Ghana’s political class gives them credit for. In a sense, the National Democratic Congress owes a huge debt of gratitude to Flt Lt. Rawlings, for bringing Professor Mills into their party.

The NPP lost this election because of the stark contrast in the choice the two parties offered the electorate. Ghanaians (the ones who aren’t the “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types - who wear blinkers permanently: and are too thick to think for themselves and too blind to see what has been going on in Ghana since 2000, i.e.!) had a choice between the humbug, arrogance, corruption and the dissimulation of many of the NPP’s leadership, especially the few powerful and incredibly greedy tribal-supremacist politicians in the presidency, and the humble nature of the peace-loving and non-tribalistic nationalist, Professor Mills.

As it happens, Professor Atta Mills is unquestionably one of the most honest politicians in Ghana’s history - and at a time when many Ghanaians feel that corruption in Ghana has reached its apogee under the NPP, his character and reputation for honesty have combined to make the NDC such a formidable force in this particular election.

The NPP is compounding its woes by the many amazing and incredible u-turns it is making all of a sudden: like a wounded elephant thrashing about in desperation - all of which only serve to reinforce the image many Ghanaian have of them as a cynical and dissimulating party full of ruthless and greedy individuals prepared to do anything to hang on to power.

Blatant tribalism is also not something that most Ghanaians, irrespective of where they hail from, are particularly enthused about - as they recognize the danger it poses to the unity and stability of their country. The country is rejecting the clear and present danger tribalism represents, by choosing to make Professor Atta Mills the next president - to ensure that there is no MK11 version of the blatant tribalism of the previous eight years, going forward!

In the year 2000, who would have thought, after hearing the criticism by the NPP of the sale by the NDC regime of a 30 per cent stake in Ghana Telecom to Telecom Malaysia that the NPP would end up asset-stripping Ghana, in one opaque privatization deal after another throughout its tenure?

To top all that it even went ahead and passed a law indemnifying those who set up the GT takeover deal from prosecution for any criminality associated with the deal - even though it is clearly an illegality as our constitution demands that all Ghanaians fight corruption, not protect those who engage in acts of corruption! Who wants leaders like that, I ask?

Who would have believed in 2000 that in what must rank as one of the most egregious examples of fraud in high places ever seen in Ghana, that in 2008 the NPP would railroad a bill through parliament sealing a sale and purchase agreement for VALCO by a “consortium” (grandly named International Aluminum Partners, by the crooks on the make, and on the take, who failed so miserably in putting the deal together!) made up of two foreign companies both of which publicly denied ever agreeing to purchase the company?

Who wants a political part that is full of such shenanigans? Ghanaians have simply had enough - and want change. Above all they want a president from a party other than the NPP who will ensure that all the crooked deals that have gone on in the last eight years are thoroughly investigated and that the perpetrators who sought to enrich themselves at the expense of Ghanaians and their country, are prosecuted and jailed. Period.

Even if the NPP had turned Ghana into paradise, they would have still been voted out of office for that reason alone. Ghanaians do not want their country to be taken for a ride ever again by any group of politicians they elect into office - especially as they want the revenues from oil and natural gas to be used to transform their country into Africa’s equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia: not to enrich Ghana’s crooked politicians!

Hmmm, Ghana – enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May Go bless and protect our homeland Ghana always. Long live freedom! Log live Ghana!