In the highly charged bear pit of party politics, it is quite understandable that swords would clash and some would even overshoot the runway of decent commentary with respect to the NPP’s presidential primaries campaign.
However, I believe that even then, introspection should be key and utterances should be carefully weighed and jealously guarded.
In our traditional setup, you do not send just anyone to the palace to speak for the family, lest by their utterances, they become a liability to a cause rather than an asset.
Dishonourable commentary
This is why I was aghast to read on various social media platforms over the weekend a comment attributed to the MP for Asante Akim South, Kwaku Asante Boateng, on Dr Bawumia’s campaign to become flag bearer of the NPP.
He is reported to have said that “Dr Bawumia is an outsider and like a slave who was brought in to serve us, he is not fit to occupy the main seat as our leader.”
It is a matter of record that when Dr Bawumia was first selected by the then candidate Akufo-Addo to serve as his running mate on the ticket of the NPP back in 2008, he was not a particularly well-known figure and his selection came as a surprise within the party.
But over the past 17 years, there is no doubt in any objective mind that Dr Bawumia has served the NPP very well, and like all the other candidates, is fully fit and qualified to occupy the main seat as the party’s leader.
Nobody was born clutching a party membership card.
Unlike citizenship which can be acquired automatically at birth, every member of every political party was at a point an outsider who went through due process and was, thus, granted membership.
Ethnic undertones, historical lessons
However one dices it, it is impossible for this vile comment to escape assertions of ethnic undertones, even if the MP did not refer to Dr Bawumia’s ethnicity in explicit terms.
This is because he knew, or ought to have known, the political milieu within which he was making those comments, together with certain historical realities.
He is an Ashanti who sits in parliament on the ticket of a political party whose detractors have delighted over the years in tagging it as an Akan-centric party within a political tradition that disdains other ethnic groups.
This is where tact comes in when making public comments on such a sensitive matter in order not to reinforce these false narratives, even if that was not the intention.
When the late former Vice-President Alhaji Aliu Mahama lost out in the NPP’s 2007 presidential primaries, the party’s political detractors claimed it as evidence that the NPP had used and dumped him because he was a northerner, even though Alhaji Mahama actually lost in the then three northern regions.
Ahead of the 2023 presidential primaries, many from the other side again predicted the party would dump Dr Bawumia after ‘using’ him over the past years to get power.
They ended up with egg on their faces when he resoundingly won the primaries.
Today, among the contestants, Dr Bawumia is the only non-Akan in the presidential primaries. Within the NPP, and even nationally, he belongs to a minority ethnic group.
I think most reasonable people will conclude that the comment had ethnic colouring to it, and some may even seek political capital from it by claiming that his comment is representative of many minds within the party.
Why then give fodder and comfort to those who wish to harvest such scalps? Did he rail against Mr Freddie Blay coming from the CPP to rise to the high office of NPP national chairman? If not, why?
Perhaps what the MP and many of his ilk, in and out of the party, do not realise is that the original United Party, which birthed the ‘UP tradition’, was the product of a merger in October 1957 of various opposition political parties, following the passing of the Avoidance of Discrimination Act (1957), which banned regional, ethnic or religious-based parties.
Of these parties, the Northern People’s Party, led by S.D. Dombo, had the highest number of opposition seats (15) in parliament, and yet, the party leadership invited Dr Busia of the Ghana Congress Party, with only one seat, to lead the new UP.
Other parties to the merger included the National Liberation Movement, Moslem Action Party, Anlo Youth Organisation, Togoland Congress and Ga Shifimo Kpee. They all had one seat each in parliament.
Clearly then, even from the prism of the ethnic factor, Dr Bawumia is very much at home in the NPP. He is family, certainly not a stranger.
Contest of ideas
There are many issues that confront us as a society.
Indeed, the future has begun and we are already late. In the 21st century, our health and educational systems are not fit for purpose, our roads are death traps, open defecation has been almost normalised and many young people cannot find work.
The list is unacceptably endless.
Any political discourse to lead our country must, therefore, be a contest of ideas grounded in mutual respect and decency on how to move this nation forward, and not asinine notions such as who is supposedly a slave, an outsider or blue-blooded.
A sitting MP is expected to elevate the conversation.
It is gratifying to note the wide condemnation that has greeted those unsavoury remarks, particularly from the NPP leadership, to drive home the point that the MP’s narrow and dangerous views are his and his alone.
Tellingly, at the 2024 elections, he won the Asante Akim South seat with 27,396 votes, whilst Dr Bawumia received 28,367 votes in the presidential elections in the constituency.
Perhaps Kwaku Asante Boateng should focus more on pushing the agenda of his candidate, whoever he may be, and tone down his obsession with Dr Bawumia, which is leading him to shoot wantonly from the hip.
After all, as an MP, he is an honourable man. Of course, he is.
Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng
E-mail: rodboat@yahoo.com
