Opinion: Broad Consultation with Whom and For What? – By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Ghana’s former President John Dramani Mahama/Photo: The Impact Crew

It is quite refreshing to hear former President John Dramani Mahama join the progressive pack on the critical question of the fee-free Senior High School (SHS) policy initiative. He ought to have realized by now that he cannot stop progress or playing possum or political games with the futures of our children and grandchildren. I am talking about the Double-Track(ed) System, which President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo further clarified over this past weekend, when he keynoted the Asafotufiami Festival at Big Ada, in the Ga-Dangme District of the Greater-Accra Region.

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But I am still livid and implacably disappointed in the all-too-predictable initial reaction of the leaders of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC). And it is primarily because it was the Social Darwinian and elitist stance of these “Social Democrats” that has created this criminally immoral situation which finds at least a fifth or 20-percent of eligible SHS pupils annually not being able to enroll and attend in order to significantly improve their chances for a much better living standard or quality of life in the near future.

When you add up this deliberately elitist neglect of the poorest and most vulnerable youths among us by the 30-plus years that the operatives of the National Democratic Congress have effectively dominated our national political landscape, the enormity of the deliberate and mischievous creation of two unequal societies in the country could not be deemed to be more offensive to our human sensibilities. Indeed, no civilized country in the world does what the key operatives of the NDC have done and have been doing in terms of the wanton and deliberate destruction of the futures of generations of our children and grandchildren.

Looked at in practical terms, it is the operatives of the Akufo-Addo-led Administration of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) that exclusively deserve to be given the accolade of “Social Democrats.” Nearly every social intervention – or safety net – program introduced into the country to significantly improve the quality of life of the abjectly poor and destitute over the past 30 years, was introduced by the incomparably progressive leaders of the New Patriotic Party, and not the National Democratic Congress who have been morbidly and pathologically fixated on scheming for votes at the polls.

And so the most logical question that any progressive-minded adult-Ghanaian citizen ought to be asking him-/herself is the following: Had Mr. John Dramani Mahama won the 2016 Presidential Election, would he have responsibly pursued the all-inclusive policy of leaving no SHS-capable student behind by wisely and selectively introducing the Double-Track(ed) System that is laudably aimed at ensuring that the civilized concept of “Democracy” or “Democratic Culture” becomes a practical reality for all Ghanaian youths? The answer is a resounding “No!” You see, it is a rather scandalous and preposterous proposition for the leaders of the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party to presume to “broadly consult” with the very people who have systematically, deliberately and criminally colluded and collaborated to savagely destroy the futures of millions of Ghanaian youths over the past 40 years.

It goes without saying that any attempt to “broadly consult” with the incurably reprobate Mahama Posse can only mean the primitive reversal of the progressive and inalienably positive non-negotiable and inclusive enrichment of every single one of our children and grandchildren. Is this what we have been toiling indefatigably for? Absolutely not!

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com  Ghanaffairs

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