Unwarranted pursuit of vengeance

Currently running on some media outlets is an advertisement by the National Democratic Congress assuring Ghanaians that if the party wins power in the December 7, 2024, Presidential elections, all members of the New Patriotic Party who have misappropriated or stolen public funds will be prosecuted.

Indeed, ignorant members of the party even suggest that they would jail such perceived miscreants.

It is required that those who hold public office exercise fiduciary responsibilities to husband public resources, including funds, with diligence and due care to promote the best interest of the public in whose name and for whose interest they serve in public service.

Thus, if a government pursues the rule of law and due process to demand accountability and diligence in protecting and safeguarding public resources and national assets, that must be applauded. But that must be based on evidence, not speculation or an exercise of partisan political vindictiveness.

Therefore, if a group of people, baselessly in the name of partisan political consideration, deliberately plan, consciously scheme and consistently resolve to prosecute, indeed persecute, their political opponents as a top priority in the agenda of nation-building, democracy and national development, then that is not only vicious, evil vengeance and a misconception but equally demonstrates a lack of understanding of the democratic ethos and a fratricidal vendetta.

To pay money to a group of people to devote time and energy to so disingenuously design such messages of hatred and vengeance is to underline a suicidal and murderous pursuit of political power for mischief.

Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa is a very intelligent and maverick politician who ordinarily is discreet in providing information about political strategies to surprise perceived opponents.

But when he appeared on Channel One (Citi) Television, to explain and sell the NDC manifesto, he did not mince words or indulge in any equivocation when he stated with certainty that in their consultations to design the manifesto of the party, the majority of the stakeholders they engaged or encountered told them in plain words that the NDC, under any possible John Mahama administration, cannot achieve any meaningful development or improve the stock of infrastructure within the four years that he would serve as President.

Accordingly, the stakeholders recommended the prosecution of all members of the NPP they have imagined to have been found to have committed fraud or financial loss to the state. The manifesto then had to focus on prosecution of such perceived elements, rather than focus on any meaningful policy to build Ghana.

If the top priority of a future government that governed and ruled the country for 16 years does not have any foundation on far-reaching policies and programmes for the medium and long term but only the persecution of their opponents, then that party does not deserve the mandate of the people, since it can only reset the clock of progress backwards.

Justice Dotse JSC made that damning but infectious comment about "create, loot and share", which had a firm grounding on incontrovertible evidence produced before a competent court of jurisdiction. NDC members’ claim or allegations of corruption against the NPP is based on phantom beliefs, viciousness and their own fertile and disingenuous imaginations.

Is it any strange that instead of providing concrete form and support for a 24-hour economy, the presidential candidate of the NDC, John Dramani Mahama, has gone tangentially baseless to accuse the Electoral Commission of printing extra ballot papers and transferring them to the NPP without stating what the NPP does with the extra ballot papers?

Are these thumbprinted and stuffed into the transparent ballot box before voting or added to the counted votes after the declaration of the results at each polling station or added at the national collation centre? Again, are the extra ballot papers for presidential or parliamentary polls, since the impact on the two is not the same?

The fact that the NDC is paying for advertisements to be run, assuring Ghanaians that they would recover every pesewa stolen by members of the NPP clearly underlines the fact that the party has no purposeful programme or policy to move our country to the next level.

When the NDC claims that it initiated the free senior high school policy and programme, as well as led in the digitalisation programme, all one needs to ask is at what time.

More importantly, when the NDC claims that it has a plan to recruit more nurses, the natural question is how many batches of nurse cohorts the NDC left behind, which created a backlog that the NPP had to deal with before those who completed from 2017. Between 2012 and 2017, how many nurses were absorbed under the NDC administration?

And when the NDC says that it is the only party that employs large numbers, how come there was the Association of Unemployed Graduates of Ghana?

Again, on the free SHS programme, if there is one thing that the people of the northern regions: Upper East, Upper West, Northern, North East and Savannah, as well as the fringes of Bono East and Ashanti, who benefitted from the Northern Scholarship Scheme, must admit, it is the fact that it was during the Free SHS era that their children had equal academic terms as their counterparts in the south of the country.

Until then, schools in those regions usually reopened late and closed earlier than their counterparts in Bono, Ahafo, Ashanti, Western, Western North, Central, Greater Accra, Eastern, Volta and Oti regions due to long delays in releasing funds for the running of the schools.

The NDC knows too well that there is nothing that the party can do to increase the infrastructural stock of the country. That is why it is focusing on the uncanny path of the unwarranted pursuit of vengeance.