Time can play a lot of tricks on the human mind. It has a way of healing broken hearts and placing hope and even joy in the place which was once filled with pain and bitterness.
Call it the balm that soothes the pain and removes hatred from the memory chip. May be it is God’s own way of allowing time to filter the bad and awful things out of the system.
Of course, time can also sap us of our pleasant memories.
Upon reflection, I am wondering how many Ghanaians could remember the mood of the country around this time last year. We had then concluded a bitter first round of voting which left a stalemate.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) had lost the parliamentary election narrowly but came slightly on top in the presidential. According to results released by Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the Electoral Commissioner, on Wednesday, December 10, 2008, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of the NPP had 4,159,439 votes, constituting 49.13 per cent of the valid ballots cast. His closest rival, Professor John Evans Atta Mills of the NDC, had 4,056,634 votes, representing 47.92 per cent of valid ballots.
In the parliamentary, the NPP had 103 seats, the NDC had 113, and the Convention People’s Party (CPP) had one, while four seats were won by independent candidates. Two seats — Asutifi South and Akwatia — were then not decided.
The campaign to December 7, 2008, was very hectic, murky and some places bloody. The two main parties — the NPP and NDC — were at their mudslinging best. Most of the dirty tricks were carried from the rally grounds to the media, which served as the platform for politicians to prove how crude and rude some of them could be. At certain stages, it became difficult to tell the difference between journalists and politicians because they were stalking the same enemy from different flanks.
Midway into the campaign, it became obvious to objective observers and open-minded supporters of the NPP that the NDC, which appeared weak and fragile at the initial stages, was, like a typical old war horse, not going to take defeat lying low.
After the first round, which the ruling NPP then was sure to take under the ‘One-Touch’ slogan, desperation set in and government decisions became erratic. The NDC decided to hammer where blood was oozing most.
In some of those acts of desperation, convicted traffic offenders were hurriedly released because the Attorney-General’s Department claimed they had been convicted under a non-existent law. The ban placed on the importation of textiles through other entry points apart from the Takoradi Port was quickly lifted.
Former President J. A. Kufuor went into frenzy inaugurating uncompleted projects and cutting the sod for the commencement of others especially fishing harbours along the coast of Ghana which, for all intents and purposes, were not captured in the national budget.
While all these could be seen as part of the political game and spoilt nobody’s business, a more intriguing and ominous arsenal was unleashed by the NPP, may be as a last resort. That was the fear theory. It started as claims by certain people that they had received death threats in the form of text messages or phone calls.
Initially, a few names, including those regular commentators on radio and television, came up as those whose lives were under threat. To oil the wheel of political intrigue that had been set in motion, Ghanaians were told that the phone number on which the threats were being issued belonged to former President J.J. Rawlings. It sounded strange and ridiculous, but people were ready to believe it.
The names of those who appeared on what became known as the ‘hit list’ were carefully chosen and multiplied on daily basis and included big names like Pastor Mensa Anamuah Otabil, the General Overseer of the International Central Gospel Church; Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams of the Action Faith Ministries International; Mrs Justice Henrietta Abban, the judge over the Valley Farms case culminating in the conviction and imprisonment of Mr Tsatsu Tsikata, the former Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC); pastors of other religious bodies, ministers in the NPP government, NPP Members of Parliament, nurses, teachers, musicians, doctors, intellectuals, business men and women, media practitioners, disc jockeys and many others until the list became endless.
Later, it was as if all Ghanaians had become endangered species. And the message was the same: “You will be killed if NDC wins the election.” It neither made sense, nor did it sound logical that a party desperately fighting for political power would eliminate almost the whole population after it had won the elections. But that was what the NPP strategists decided to put on the market.
Whether that strategy and others worked in favour of the NPP or not is a lesson for all political parties. But the results of the second round, which took place on December 28, 2008, showed that the NPP had switched positions with the NDC. The results showed that Prof Mills had 50.13 per cent, while Nana Akufo-Addo had 49.87 per cent of valid ballots cast.
The last hope for the NPP presidential candidate, which was the Tain Constituency election, came on and passed without any change in the final outcome of the presidential election.
The danger in that fake hit list was that it took our political campaigning to a new and a more dangerous level. It sowed seeds of fear and hatred. It brought the nation to the edge and precipice of self-destruction. What should have been a civil exercise to elect our President and lawmakers was turned into a battle of survival in which the stronger could easily annihilate the weaker.
It is a pity we have in our midst, people who are ready to do anything to win political power. It is also a sad commentary that some of these prominent men of God were part of that gigantic and dangerous game that could have brought this country into chaos.
Thank God, Ghana survived. The men of God who claimed they had been threatened with death have survived and in some cases expanded territories and hopefully won more souls for the vineyard of the Lord. All the others including those who amplified the hoax in the media are alive and still going about their legitimate businesses.
Ghanaians generally missed their Christmas and New Year celebrations last year. Not this year. No matter how hard things are, there is hope and we can celebrate, knowing fully well that there is a better tomorrow.
I wish dear readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year in advance.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
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