Let’s get this straight, right off the bat: Mr. Kwame Pianim is a tragicomical political figure who insists and persists in pursuing the quixotic cause of pleasing his sometime inveterate ideological foes and captors. And one can almost be certain that as a political prisoner on death row by Mr. Jerry John Rawlings, whose illegitimate government he had righteously sought to overthrow, Mr. Pianim likely must have been subjected to an excruciating surgical process of lobotomy, thus his consistent exhibition of erratic behavior where the interests of his former captors and key operatives of the so-called National Democratic Congress clash with those of the main opposition New Patriotic Party.
In essence, there is nothing really personal about the nuisance pronouncements of the former CEO of the Ghana Cocoa-Marketing Board (now called COCOBOD). The man has been, literally, crying like a toddler ever since he was summarily disqualified from running for president on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party in 1996, basically for having a criminal political record. He would unsuccessfully seek to place an injunction on the presidential candidacy of the NPP, merely because his own presidential ambitions had been abruptly torpedoed by a member from among the executive ranks of the New Patriotic Party.
And so when Nana Akomea, the NPP communications director, confidently asserts that “Kwame Pianim has absolutely no moral authority to chide NPP for going to court” on a matter that more than half of Ghanaian voters are in perfect agreement with, the Akyem-Nsutam native could hardly be contradicted.
It is also not clear precisely what he means when Mr. Pianim rather vacuously accuses the national executive members of the NPP of suffering from “intellectual and mental laziness” when, in fact, the latter group of Ghanaian statesmen and women have more than amply demonstrated before the august court of public opinion that, indeed, Dr. Afari-Gyan’s declaration of President Mahama as winner of Election 2012 is nothing short of the criminally fraudulent. Unless Mr. Pianim has any conclusive evidence indicating that, indeed, the Akufo-Addo-led NPP petition before the Wood Supreme Court is patently tantamount to a wild goose chase, then Mr. Pianim has to do the honorable thing by promptly retracting his insult against the NPP national executive membership and unreservedly apologizing for such an intemperate and insufferable exhibition of arrogance, uncouthness and ill-will.
Indeed, it is on the preceding grounds of Mr. Pianim’s gross exhibition of uncouth behavior that I vehemently beg to differ with Nana Akomea’s rather faulty diplomatic characterization of Mr. Pianim as an “elder statesman.” No doubt, by Ghanaian standards, even as Prof. Kofi Awoonor has been erroneously described as a “statesman,” rather than the veritable tribal nationalist that the latter incontrovertibly is, Mr. Pianim may be aptly described as an “elderly” man; but the critical question of whether Mr. Pianim qualifies to be called a “statesman” is patently moot.
Also, the fact that Mr. Pianim is reported to have made his “intellectual and mental laziness” comment to the editor-publisher of the so-called Africawatch magazine, is predictably in keeping with what I have in the past dubbed as the Ejisu Fifth-Column Wing of the New Patriotic Party, a bunch of cold-blooded mercenaries who would not bat an eye, or hesitate for a split-second, to sell their own mothers to the highest bidder should the occasion arise.
What is also interesting and seems to have evaded the radar screens of many a major commentator on the Ghanaian political scene, is the fact that even Prof. Kwabena Frempong-Boateng, the man that Mr. Pianim virulently backed against the presidential candidacy of Nana Akufo-Addo, publicly and unreservedly supports the NPP suit challenging the political legitimacy of Mr. John Dramani Mahama. And so the logical question to ask here is as follows: Could Prof. Frempong-Boateng also be suffering from the sort of pathological state of “intellectual and mental laziness” that Mr. Pianim is talking about?
I also hope that Mr. Pianim has not forgotten the old maxim that goes as follows: “Show me your friend, and I will show you your character.” In short, if, in the opinion of Mr. Pianim, Prof. Frempong-Boateng can be aptly envisaged to be suffering from a blistering case of “intellectual and mental laziness,” what possibly could the accuser, himself, be suffering from?
Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D. Department of English, Nassau Community College of SUNY Garden City, New York
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