NPP may find itself between a rock and… - Enimil Ashon warns

Nobody has appointed me an advisor to New Patriotic Party (NPP) on Election 2024, so in this commentary, I am only a meddler with an extra-sensitive proboscis. 

They should take it from me: unless the party re-thinks its communication on the LGBTQ Bill currently at the Consideration Stage in Parliament, it stands the danger of being labelled an LGBTQI+ secret sympathizer out to defeat that bill.

I am not God; I am not even gifted with the gift of a seer, but I can assure the party that only a direct intervention by the Creator Himself can save it from a humiliating defeat unprecedented in Ghanaian election history — if it dares Ghanaians on the issue.

Before I go on, permit me, dear reader, to get out of the way another matter of grave concern.

I have lost count of the number of probes announced by Fire Service after market fire outbreaks.

Like you, I am bored to tears by those announcements that “The Fire Service is investigating”. 

Aren’t fire outbreaks at our markets getting one too many?

To win an election, governments have handled market fires with kid gloves.

Like Ghanaians’ attitude to sanitation, the market traders have come to think that it is nobody’s business whether they spit or litter.

They believe they have unfettered freedom to cook with naked fire. 

What’s the solution?

One, fish out the guilty trader (I thought that was one of the reasons for setting up these probes, in the first place) punish them — and advertise the punishment. 

Two, like car insurance, ask traders to insure their stalls as a condition for setting up at any market.

Three, absolutely no cooking in the market.  

This shouldn’t cause a government to lose votes.

More anon.

Interest

This week, I have made it my case to warn the NPP that they may be sitting close to an exposed live electrical cable.

It is not in the party’s interest that the public (Ghanaian super religious public) perceives it as having LGBTQ sympathies.  

I warn that the ‘Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill 2021’ is a naked electrical live cable to anyone who opposes its passage.

The bill proposes heavier criminal penalties for same sex activities, with the maximum penalty of five years in prison and criminalises anyone who identifies as LGBT, queer, pansexual, an ally, or any other non-conventional gender identity.  

I don’t know where the suspicion started from but many Ghanaians have, since the bill was laid before the House, had a feeling that the NPP is against its passage into law.

The suspicion heightened recently when Afenyo-Markin, the Deputy Majority Leader, boldly came out to announce his support for what was originally thought to be the stance of the Catholic Church following Cardinal Turkson’s caution against criminalising homosexuality. 

Stance

Cardinal Turkson's stance was originally thought to be in agreement with Pope Francis, who said recently that he was open to blessing same-sex couples.

Note, though, that the Pope has since pronounced that the Church still considers same-sex relationships as "objectively sinful" and does not endorse same-sex marriage.

The alacrity with which Afenyo-Markin, in the name of being a Roman Catholic, endorsed Cardinal Turkson’s perceived opposition to the bill, resurrected the Ghanaian public’s suspicion of an NPP secret agenda to scuttle it.

Many Ghanaians are convinced that but for the hard stance of the Speaker and its lack of majority in the House, NPP would, by now, have devised some Parliamentary tricks to oust the bill.

With a Muslim presidential candidate, one would have thought that the party should, by now, not only have made a loud and definitive statement of its position but should also have gone a step further to shout as loud as the National Democratic Congress (NDC) does. Indeed, to Ghanaians, Bawumia’s silence is loud.

The public suspects that the party fears a reprisal from western donors: it has seen Uganda bitten by a snake, so it is frightened by a worm. 

In Ghana, the consequences are dire for any political party that is seen not to be on the side of the bill. 

Apostle Nyamekye, Chairman of the Church of Pentecost is an avowed champion of the bill. 

He has warned, publicly on television, that his church and other Pentecostals will punish any party that opposes the bill.

One half of the membership of this church alone is in excess of 1.5 million votes.

Add the Presbyterians and Methodists, and you have a block of votes far more than what Ashanti Region — that is, if it votes en bloc — can offer the NPP. 

And who says all Ashantis are so pro-LGBTQI that they will go against the edict from their churches?

I haven’t added the Muslim population! 

The writer is Executive Director, Centre for Communication and Culture.

E-mail: ashonenimil@gmail.com