Former Communications Director of the opposition New Patriotic Party, two-time flagbearer of the party, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
That is the charge of Mustapha Hamid, aide to Mr. Akufo-Addo.
Mr Hamid believes there cannot be any other justification for the persistent campaign of vilification waged by Dr. Arthur K., and designed to malign the former Foreign Minister who is making a third-term bid for the NPP’s nomination.
Barely three days after Mr. Akufo-Addo secured an emphatic endorsement from more than 80 percent of the party’s special delegates, Arthur K. issued a statement describing as subversive calls on three other aspirants – Alan Kyerematen, Francis Addai-Nimoh and Osei Ameyaw who obtained negligible figures at the polls to withdraw from the race. (A fourth candidate, Joe Ghartey has withdrawn from the race).
He did not end there; he also questioned Mr. Akufo-Addo’s credentials as a unifying and peace-loving leader.
“To win, if he (Akufo-Addo) becomes the nominee, he needs a united party that has dealt with corruption and violence and intimidation behind him. To get there, he has huge mountains to climb,” he wrote.
He said, “Ghanaians would quite properly wonder whether a leader who is not inclusive in his party and will not forthrightly condemn violence or talk of it in his party, can unite Ghana and guarantee peace as President.”
Reacting to the comments on Joy FM’s Newsnight, Mustapha Hamid said Arthur K’s questions about inclusiveness were at best curious and at worst contradictory.
He said for a man who challenged Nana Akufo-Addo for the flagbearership of the NPP in 2007 and later became Communications Director of the party’s campaign and formed part of Nana Akufo-Addo’s inner circles to be complaining of inclusiveness, it can only raise questions about the genuine intentions of the complainant.
According to Mustapha, even after the 2008 elections, Mr. Akufo-Addo still involved the medical-doctor-turned-politician in his 2010 flagbearer contest until he (Arthur K) opted to leave the country.
“If Nana Addo was non-inclusive, he wouldn’t have included somebody like Arthur K, not just in his campaign, but continue to trust him and make him his confidante even after the elections until he decided to break off for whatever reason and become Nana Addo’s perhaps major critic in this country,” he stated.
How can Dr. Arthur K. accuse the flagbearer aspirant of being non-inclusive? he questioned.
Responding to Arthur K’s point about the need for Nana Addo to prove he has a party that has dealt with corruption behind him if he becomes the party’s nominee, Mustapha said the former Attorney-General’s anti-corruption credentials are not in doubt.
“We are all human beings and may have our deficiencies but Nana Addo’s deficiencies do not include corruption, they do not include violence and they do not include exclusion,” he noted.
Mr. Hamid catalogued actions of the former minister which indicate he is unblemished when it comes to corruption.
As Attorney-General and later minister for Foreign Affairs, Nana Akufo-Addo, he said, “never drew one litre of fuel from government coffers, he paid for his own security, never lived in a government bungalow, paid extra from his own pocket in order to sleep in hotels when he went abroad, et cetera; those are public records at the” ministries where Nana Addo served as minister.
Mr. Hamid said even Mr. Akufo-Addo’s political foes, the NDC “have never been able to raise an issue of corruption against Nana Addo; Arthur K is the one to say so? Where is his evidence?”
He said the time had come for followers of the NPP to agree collectively that Dr. Kennedy has an agenda to destroy the favourite to win the NPP’s nomination for the 2016 presidential election.
But the US-based Ghanaian doctor rejected the claims; he said he had no such intentions.
He insisted his involvement in Nana Akufo-Addo’s campaign was only a token inclusion.
Many others, he argued were sidelined by the NPP’s Presidential candidate including then National Organiser Muktar Bamba, Women’s Organiser Otiko Djaba amongst others, he pointed out.
He maintained he is only interested in seeing the NPP properly positioned to win the next election.
