The final lap

Dec 2,2008
By Kofi Akordor
The final lap in any distance event in athletics is the most crucial. That is what determines victory or defeat. Usually, at the starter’s gun, some, as part of their strategy, sprint into the lead and maintain the momentum to victory at the finishing line. Not always does that strategy work to plan, because some, in their determination to keep the lead, over-exert themselves and burn their reserve energies, ending the race far behind.
For others, it is a slow start and a gradual build-up as the race progresses and with a last minute burst powered by conserved energy, victory is attained. Like the fast start strategy, the slow start is not necessarily the best at all times. Sometimes, quite against your expectation, the more you expect the other competitors to tire and burn out, the more they gallop and before you are aware, you have ended up where you began — last.
When it started, the race for the presidency and parliament looked too long to end soon, but so soon, we are close to the finishing line and whatever strategy the various candidates adopted, December 7 is just five days away and we all await to see those who will cross the finishing line with smiles on their faces, in Usain Bolt fashion, or those with contorted faces out of wasteful exhaustion.
In a world where polls are conducted on no serious scientific basis, it will be fallacious and self-deluding for any of the contesting parties or candidates to pin their hopes on any of the so-called opinion polls.
As should be expected, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), as the party in power, took off in whirlwind fashion and thereafter became the target of the other parties. Even the primaries to choose the flag bearer of the NPP was a spectacular exercise in itself, coming close to be like a process to elect the President of the Republic. When the chips were down and Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo got the nod at the 2007 December Congress held at the University of Ghana, Legon, the party heavyweights quickly put the past, with all its acrimonies behind, and joined forces with Nana Akufo Addo, for the ultimate — the Presidency.
If resources and publicity alone could win elections, then I dare say the NPP had a great advantage that will be difficult to overturn. But as the saying goes, the race is not for the swift nor the sure, and so it will be foolhardiness to drop guard out of complacency and expect miracles to happen.
A party in power has its advantages of incumbency, including limitless resources, both in cash and kind, a powerful propaganda and publicity machinery, using both the print and electronic media. The NPP played its cards well in this regard. It battled the baggage of incumbency also. A governing party’s weaknesses, real or perceived, are hammered at at will. After all, the only way to oust a ruling in power is to say a lot about its failures, trying to rally round the masses on the general economic and social weaknesses in the system, which are always in abundance in a third world country like Ghana. The NPP was not spared its fair share of the whipping.
The NPP, however, found an escape valve. That is, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), had been in power before and so it was easy for the NPP to play the comparison game to soothe some of the pains of criticism.
That brings us to the campaign machinery of the NDC, which started slowly with Professor John Evans Atta-Mills’s door-to-door ‘I-Care’ strategy. The selection of a relatively younger John Dramani Mahama as his running mate brought some fire into the Atta-Mills’ campaign.
The firebrand of the party, in the person of its founder and former President J.J. Rawlings, was on course as usual, pulling huge crowds wherever he went even if some of his pronouncements sound controversial. The performance of the NDC, in all, had not been bad and this had heavily diluted any lead the NPP had at the start of the race. In fact, on December 7, the result can tilt either way, even though the ruling party has a slight edge.
Apart from the two leading parties, the party that made the most dramatic entry in the race was the rejuvenated Convention People’s Party (CPP), under the flagbearership of Dr Paa Kwasi Nduom, popularly known as the ‘Edwumawura’. There is no doubt that the CPP is going to eat into the fortunes of both the NPP and the NDC and should the polls move into a runoff, the CPP may hold the trump card.
The other presidential candidates, namely Dr Edward Mahama of the People’s National Convention (PNC); Mr Emmanuel Ansah-Antwi of the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP); Mr T.N. Ward-Brew of the Democratic People’s Party (DPP); Mr Kwabena Adjei of the Reformed Patriotic Democrats (RPD) and Mr Kwasi Amoafo Yeboah (Independent), are at best spicing the democratic gravy. They may only become a force to reckon with in the event of a runoff when their support could tilt the fortunes of eitherof the two major parties.
The campaigning itself has been very vigorous, sometimes acrimonious and on a few occasions bloody. The Electoral Commission (EC) has been battered from several angles by the various political parties, sometimes with some justification, . In some cases too, people were just seeing objects where there were no shadows.
It was easy to feel some desperation in the campaign messages of the parties, especially the NPP and the NDC, and it was not too difficult to understand why. The NDC has tasted power before and clearly understood the vast difference between being in power and outside it. The NPP is still enjoying fruits of political power and, therefore, could imagine what it would be like to return to the wilderness of opposition. All the parties have made so many promises that one wonders whether in four years time, there will be anything like poverty, disease, squalor, hunger and deprivation in this country.
All the actors, while preaching peaceful and transparent elections, sometimes go to the extreme trying to allay fears of members of the public. Just recently, a top police officer dropped guard when he told a listening public that the police would not hesitate to shoot to maim anyone trying to tamper with a ballot box. Even armed robbers are not to be shot unless under circumstances when the police are compelled to do so to defend themselves. So why shoot somebody who will be foolish enough to go and carry a whole ballot box to where only God knows?
Even though we have gone through the exercise of voting to elect our political leaders over the years without any serious breach of the peace, knowing ourselves very well, as a breed of people whose behaviour cannot be predicted, we are always suspicious of everything, thereby heightening tension unnecessarily. That also kept our religious leaders busy fasting and praying for peaceful elections.
Some latter-day prophets and prophetesses also are not to be left in the interesting game. They have already seen in their dreams (or were they hallucinations?) the winner of the presidential seat even before the first ballot could be cast.
It is the wish of every Ghanaian that our next election is conducted in a free, transparent and trouble-free environment. Wherever the verdict goes, we shall all be smiling while we read this column next week.