Where I come from, our elders don’t tell lies. If an elder tells lies, and he is exposed, the person loses respect and it will take a long time before he gains the honour that we bestow on our elders. It is serious matter in my holy village where respect and honour are priceless in our lives.
And so there he stood behind the microphone, the magnificent ‘President-Elect’, with a brown envelop under his armpit, announcing to the world that he was the one who won the 2020 general elections and that the Electoral Commission stole the elections for his opponent, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. He went further to announce to the world that, his party won one hundred and forty parliamentary seats. A pathological liar in the making!
Then his gullible and jester who calls himself the General Secretary of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia took over the joke and also announced to whosoever cared to listen that supporters of the NDC should go out there and jubilate because the party had convincingly won the elections. That irresponsible and absurd statement opened the floodgate for a spontaneous and massive demonstration of the uninformed supporters of the NDC to hit the streets across the length and breadth of the country to burn tyres and destroy properties of the good people of Ghana. The premises of the Electoral Commission was not spared either as dishonourable Members of Parliament of the NDC joined the fray with some of them falling head over heels to shout, rant and chopped the air with bare knuckles to demonstrate at the premises of the Electoral Commission. After all these madness, Mr. Mahama came to the reality that after all, he did not win the 2020 elections and so he filed a writ at the apex court, seeking for a re-run because according to him none of them, Nana Akufo-Addo nor he, Mahama, crossed the 50% threshold. See a confused and desperate loser licking back the saliva he had spat away! That is why the sages say lies have short legs.
Bridled Mouths Of Two Nit-Wits And Braggarts
When Sammy Gyamfi, the National Communications Officer of the opposition party was voted into power, I knew he was going to contract verbal diarrhea. In no time he started to show traces of an irate scatterbrain who jumped into any fray to muddy the political waters. His paymasters liked that because he was attacking the opponent number one, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the President of the Republic of Ghana. The President, on his part, ignored the boy with contempt because in anyway, the difference between Sammy Gyamfi and Akufo-Addo is like the distance from Ghana to China where the coronavirus originated.
I wrote in this column when this upstart started to mess around that when a child wakes up too early, he will be soaked by the dew of dawn. It did not take long for his tender wings to start to get wet. As he swaged and carried the world on his tender shoulders, he threw caution to the dogs and fired from all cylinders. He was particularly targeting the President as if the man is his co-equal. This know-everything guy never completed any sentence without mentioning the name of President Akufo-Addo. In all this disrespect to the elderly President, Mr. Mahama, the ‘President-Elect’ looked on unconcerned while his infant terrible went to town to insult anyone who did not move in sympathy with his political leaning as if he is wiser than all Ghanaians.
As he went about fooling around, little did Mr. Mahama and his handlers knew that the boy was ‘putting sand in his gari’. You see, Ghanaians possess the patience of a vulture. A vulture will never touch a carcass until it makes sure the animal is really dead. And so Ghanaians gave Sammy Gyamfi a very long rope to hang himself at the appropriate time. After all, a wise man will not answer the ranting of a fool who thinks he knows everything when in fact, he knows nothing as far as the politics of Ghana is concerned.
And so it came to pass that after leading a team to file a writ at the Supreme Court, the braggart went silent. No more Press Conferences and no more participation of newspaper review programmes on television stations. A voice gone silent while awaiting for the ‘President-Elect’ to be sworn in office on the same day that Jesus will arrive on earth again.
When the guns started booming on June 4, 1979 and December 31, 1981, boys like Sam George and Peter Otukonor were born too late to witness the carnage. In fact, when Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings was having sleepless nights for the safety of her husband who was revolutionising, the likes of Otukonor and Sam George were either crawling or not born at all. These are guys who today are sitting under the comfort of the umbrella and disturbing our ears with ugly noises.
Anytime I listen to the ranting of these guys, it reminds me of the cadres of the revolution who sacrificed everything including the opportunity to get formal education to better their lots in future. Today, the Committee For the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), the Peoples’ Defense Committee (PDC), the Workers’ Defense Committee (WDC), the Citizens Vetting Committee (CVC), and the almighty 64 Battalion or Commandos are but history. Members of these revolutionary organs who risked their lives to prop up the revolution are living from hand to mouth while the upstarts are cruising in state of the art Landcruisers and living luxurious lifestyles. Those who died fighting for the two revolutions will be turning in their graves.
With the ageing of the architects of the revolution, the sidelining of Madam Konadu Agyemang Rawlings and in fact, the sudden death of Mr. Rawlings, the dream of Mr. Mahama to wrestle the NDC from the grip of the old guards is ripe for harvesting. But how do you harvest what you have not planted? That is food for thought for you. Think!
From Eric Bawah