John Mahama, NDC’s flagbearer
My dear reader, if you would recall, the NDC’s Communication Officer, Sammy Gyamfi, seemingly immersed in a gamut of emotions, audaciously came out during the 2020 voter registration exercise and issued threats to the security forces, whose only crime was to discharge their constitutionally mandated duty (see: We’ll deal with you mercilessly when we come to power – Sammy Gyamfi threatens recalcitrant soldiers, policemen – ABC News, 23/07/2020).
Sammy Gyamfi is said to have asserted somewhat brashly and impertinently: “Notice is hereby served to all unscrupulous Security Officials who have lent themselves to the despotic Akufo-Addo government as plaint agents of violence against innocent citizens, that the next NDC government will fish them out and deal with them mercilessly when the power eventually shifts.”
“What the plan is and we are telling them all the people there they are making…the Police officers there, they are making their Police Career… The Military Officers, are making their career in the Military, that respected State Security Agency coterminous with that of President Akufo-Addo. The day President Akufo-Addo will exit office will be the last day they will serve as Policemen and Military men and we will deal with them mercilessly. That is the message we are sending across to them”, a furious Sammy Gyamfi said at a press briefing on Wednesday- July 22 2020 (SOURCE: www.Ghgossip.com).
Let me venture to stress that it is only in Ghana where politicians harbour an isolated thinker’s view that electorates remain their bona fide commodities and therefore can be threatened, hoodwinked, and manipulated at their own convenience.
If that were not the case, how on earth can a so-called communication officer of a political party, out of impertinent boldness, threaten a section of the voting public with unabashed disgust?
Election, so to speak, is a social contract whereby a candidate solicits for an electorate’s mandate in exchange for better living conditions, among other things, security and protection of life and property.
The universal suffrage, as a matter of fact, is a sacrosanct exercise and cannot and must not be trampled upon by some manipulating political geezers.
In fact, the NDC’s loss in the 2020 general elections was not surprising at all. Of course, no right-thinking person would want to lose his/her livelihood, so it was a step in the right direction for the aggrieved security personnel to vote in protest of Sammy Gyamfi’s somewhat preposterous and incoherent statement.
I’m afraid, the brassbound supporters of the National Democratic Congress have a penchant for threatening and abusing those who matter in the country with abashed disgust.
If you may remember, sometime in 2016, the infamous Montie 3 unblushingly hurled invectives and issued threats to the Justices of the Supreme Court, including the threat to rape. How pathetic?
A few years later, the Medina Constituency Member of Parliament, Francis-Xavier Sosu, ‘dishonourably’ issued threats to the country’s judges without apparent reason.
Although the unhappy security forces cannot block Sammy Gyamfi and his cohorts from coming into power in the near future, they can vent their fury in condemnation over the ridiculous statement.
In any case, we can only hope and pray that the security personnel will stencil the revoltingly ugly statement at the back of their minds and make Sammy Gyamfi and his cohort pay for his fecklessness in future elections.
K. Badu, UK.
