Pubdate: Mon, 04 Feb 2008
Source: Statesman, The (Ghana)
Copyright: 2008 The Statesman
Contact:  http://www.thestatesmanonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4308
Author: Qanawu Gabby

GETTING HIGH ON LIES AND INSULTS

It has gotten to the point that NDC presidential candidate, John 
Evans Atta Mills has to come on radio, from his temporary base in 
South Africa, to say "I'm not speaking from a cemetery. I'm talking 
to you from my hotel room. I'm well and fit. Atta Mills is not dead!" 
 From discussions at bars afterwards, not even his own voice could 
kill the suspicion created by the minacious mind which pulled that 
practical joke on the NDC.

That is how ridiculously scurrilous this year's political campaign 
has gotten. A baseless, mean, reckless but probably orchestrated 
story is posted on the web (ghanaweb) that the NDC flagbearer is 
dead. A couple of radio stations pick it up and without 
cross-checking put it out there. They attribute it to the website and 
believe, as usual, that alone exonerates them from claim or blame! 
This has been the metastasis route in Ghana which guarantees that 
every lie designed to butcher the character of our leaders spreads 
and spreads like a cancer with the hope that it malignantly destroys 
the entire career of those who have chosen to pursue national service 
at the very top.

This Mills is Dead story ended one week of speculative noises about 
the health of Prof Mills. The NDC's way of dealing with speculations 
about their leader was to apply what they saw to be tit-for-tat. They 
upped their jejune, libelous attacks on the NPP presidential 
candidate Akufo-Addo. Since his nomination as his party's 
presidential candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo's popularity has soared; he 
appears to be clearly running away with the polls from the other 
presidential candidates. The NDC can't find an antidote for this so 
they have attributed Akufo-Addo's ratings to performance-enhancing 
drugs. They are even calling for a drug test! As if this year's 
presidential election is one of the disciplines at the Beijing 2008 
Olympic Games.

What the NDC, hopefully, should learn from the Mills is Dead 
fabrication is that the cheapest commodity in political PR is lies. 
It requires no research. Just make it sensational. Everybody can do, 
so don't ever fool yourself that you hold a monopoly on it. Indeed, 
if The Statesman had not apologised, retracted and continued with 
their 2006 story that Prof Mills was afflicted by a throat cancer, an 
extension of that would have been that cancer of the larynx is often 
caused by excessive alcohol or smoking. Naso laryngeal cancer also 
affects the nose like sinus. Work that out for yourself. Telling lies 
is cheap and can be as effective as you have friends in the media. 
The NPP has plenty. So let not the NDC kid themselves. Fortunately 
for them, the NPP candidate wants a campaign based on issues. And so 
it shall be but let no one mistake responsibility for meekness.

Their hackneyed, over-used, over-aged, sustained accusation that 
Akufo-Addo enjoyed a joint or two was clearly not working. The only 
that continued to be high was the NPP man's ratings. They'd expected 
Akufo-Addo or his team to respond but none was coming. This 
frustrated the NDC but they kept lighting the joint issue holding it 
till it burnt their own fingers. Events elsewhere might have finally 
convinced them all that propaganda goes up in smoke as far as voters 
are concerned. About half of the Tory (Conservative Party) 
leadership, including leader David Cameron had either admitted 
inhaling ganja or been exposed to have done so. This did not affect 
their poll ratings negatively. Do British voters no longer take 
cannabis smoking as a recreational drug seriously? Or do they simply 
balance what they know about a politician to what the papers say that 
the politician might have done in his youthful past or at his pastime?

So the NDC papers, determined to win this election by burying the NPP 
under mud, moved from soft drugs to hard drugs. Notwithstanding, 
attempts to link Akufo-Addo three years ago to Eric Amoateng's 
heroine predicament had completely backfired, with the whole scandal 
being exposed as an orchestrated conspiracy of convenience made 
possible by the internet between NDC newspapers and a Don Quixote 
web-surfing character in the UK, who saw himself as the arrested MP's 
lawyer and for a while made Ghanaians believe that he was both a 
lawyer and medical doctor.

Around the same time, on February 8, 2005, in Baltimore, Maryland, 
rumours about Mayor Martin O'Malley came to a head. A report in the 
Washington Post revealed that allegations of the Democratic mayor 
cheating on his wife and fathering a lovechild were false. Worse 
still, it came to light that a senior aide to Republican governor 
Robert L Ehrlich Jr planted the stories on a conservative website. 
O'Malley had at the time mounted a serious challenge against Ehrlich 
for the 2006 gubernatorial. He won enough sympathy to upset Ehrlich's 
incumbency. Research upon research has shown that unlike many 
campaign related activities, scandals sometimes have the potential to 
bring about the defeat of entrenched incumbents. But, it would be 
dubious for the NDC to think that inventing scandals about Nana 
Akufo-Addo would help their candidate - the entrenched three-term 
flagbearing incumbent Mills.

The Palaver story put out a story that as Foreign Minister Nana 
Akufo-Addo was arrested at a New York Airport carrying cocaine but 
was only spared because America, where users are jailed for carrying 
a gramme, showed leniency when the smuggler, carrying a diplomatic 
passport convinced them that the stash was for personal use. No date 
of the incident was given. The amount found was also not given. The 
paper's Features Editor, who also happens to be the Deputy Spokesman 
to Prof Mills, told radio listeners that the arrest took place 
somewhere in 2004 when Nana was attending a UN general assembly 
meeting. He said his paper has 'more evidence.' It was a brave lie by 
any standard. But then again this is a country where a journalist can 
say he'd interviewed an imaginary mother of an imaginary teenager who 
had died after an attempt to illegally abort Akufo-Addo's baby. And, 
yes, that 'journalist' is still allowed 'oxygen' to broadcast.

There is something extremely irresponsible about what the NDC is 
doing. To falsely accuse Akufo-Addo of being a drug addict - a wee 
smoker, cocaine addict - is to send a very dangerous message to this 
country's youth who see him as an excellent role model. The message 
from the NDC to the youth is that 'if you want to rise to the top 
take cocaine like Akufo-Addo.' Akufo-Addo is a man who has excelled 
in every field of endeavour. His children will tell you, 'he's the 
best dad!' In law, he reached the pinnacle of his profession, being 
counted as among the best of the elite profession. In politics, he 
has worked hard over the last 30 years and gotten to the top on 
merit. In business he has excelled. He has earned a remarkable 
international reputation as diplomat par excellence. He's a great 
sport. He's loved by all. To say this man is on drugs is to campaign for drugs.

The majority of Ghanaians below the age of fifty have been exposed to 
wee use, one way or the other. Even if Nana Akufo-Addo, who grew up 
in the flower, liberal age of the funky sixties in both England and 
Ghana, had experimented with grass, like many students do, what in 
modern PR tactics informed the NDC that they could win by tagging the 
man, who carries the tag 'yenim wo firi titi', as a dangerous, 
hopeless, reckless drug abuser? Finally they got a response, with 
Akufo-Addo's lawyers denying he uses any illicit drug.

Last year, reports of British home secretary (interior minister), 
Jacqui Smith admitting using soft drugs (cannabis) as a student was 
as newsworthy as a dog biting a man, or a Ghanaian husband being 
unfaithful. She knew she was on safe grounds. Her predecessor, 
Charles Clarke's admission in 1997, the year he became an MP, that he 
had taken drugs "a couple of times in my late teens" did not stop 
Tony Blair from appointing him home secretary.

Smith's followed a series of revelations and admissions on the 
youthful highness of British politicians. Not odd for any Ghanaian 
who'd been a student in the West and the controlled recreational 
'usefulness' of marijuana to many of those who later on turn out to 
be respectable leaders.

Even two Labour ministers responsible for the UK's drug policy have 
admitted to taking drugs in the past. In 2003 Caroline Flint admitted 
she took cannabis as a student but did not like it. Her successor was 
more interested in it. On becoming the minister for drugs policy, 
Vernon Coaker admitted having "one or two puffs of marijuana" while a 
student. Over 30 UK MPs have come clean.

Qanawu was in the UK when in 2000, then shadow home secretary Ann 
Widdecombe came up with what that shapeless fat bag thought was a 
fantastic idea of UKP100 fines for people caught with even the 
smallest amount of cannabis. This got her own frontbenchers so 
unhappy that eight of them, including Conservatives chairman Francis 
Maude, shadow industry secretary David Willets and shadow environment 
secretary Oliver Letwin to all own up to a drug history. Tim Yeo, 
then agriculture spokesman but now a backbencher, told the Times: "I 
was offered it on occasion and enjoyed it. I think it can have a much 
pleasanter experience than having too much to drink."

On the other hand, Tory leader David Cameron and former Prime 
Minister Tony Blair have never admitted previous drug use, in spite 
of countless 'revelations.'

When questioned by Observer journalist Andrew Rawnsley at a party 
conference fringe meeting, Mr Cameron said: "I had a normal 
university experience, if I can put it like that."

In a later television interview, he said: "I did lots of things 
before I came into politics which I shouldn't have done. We all did."

He also told BBC One's current affairs programme Question Time: "I'm 
allowed to have had a private life before politics in which we make 
mistakes and we do things that we should not and we are all human and 
we err and stray".

An analysis in the Guardian last year pointed out that 
highest-profile politicians - the leaders or would-be leaders - still 
tend to remain coy, or adamant in denial.

Mr Cameron, who wants to defeat Gordon Brown is clearly determined to 
remain tight-lipped on the subject of his inhaling past. His 
officials are sticking to an unwavering, unequivocal 'no comment'.

'David felt, and feels, politicians are entitled to a past before 
they came into politics. He had a past, and he's not going to be 
talking about it,' a spokesman said. In Britain, gone are the days 
when a politician's brush with any kind of drug necessarily risked 
serious, even fatal, career damage. It may not be the same here in 
Ghana. Yet, Ghanaians are not foolish to allow baseless allegations 
deny them of a leadership of hope.

Former US President Bill Clinton famously admitted using cannabis, 
but not inhaling. But on the subject of whether he has ever taken 
illegal drugs himself, Mr Blair remained silent.

But, Obama has been bold by admitting he used to puff. Some have even 
accused him of using cocaine in the past. But, the American voters 
believe they know him and they accept that their leaders are also 
entitled to a past. Thus, to belive you can bring a good man down by 
fabricating a past or even a current addiction for a politician who 
neither smokes nor drinks alcohol, a politician who is envied, 
respected and admired by the majority of Ghanaians as the total 
leader is absolutely unwise. It only exposes those behind it as 
lacking in focus and programme.

In the US, Senator Barack Obama in his 1995 memoir, Dreams From my 
Father, detailed his drug and alcohol use in his high school and 
college years. He admitted using 'pot...and booze; maybe a little 
blow when you could afford it.' Recently a spokesman for Illinois 
defended Obama's admission that he had taken cocaine years before. 'I 
believe what this country is looking for is someone who is open, 
honest and candid' about such issues, the spokesman said.

Senior Cameron policy adviser Oliver Letwin, who memorably declared 
he had smoked pot by accident. 'At Cambridge, I was a very 
pretentious student,' he said. 'I grew a beard and took up a pipe. On 
one occasion some friends put some dope in a pipe I was smoking. It 
had absolutely no effect on me at all. I don't inhale pipes.' Phew!

Tory education spokesman, David Willetts, was quoted as saying: 'I 
had two puffs. I didn't like it and I have never had any experience 
of drugs since then.'

 From 1940 Winston Churchill used the barbiturate, quinalbarbitone. 
After his stroke in 1953 he was given amphetamine. Private papers 
disclosed that at the height of the Suez crisis in 1956, Anthony 
Eden, UK premier, was on drinamyl, better known as 'purple hearts.'

Mo Mowlam, former Northern Ireland Minister, in 2000 admitted she 
smoked cannabis as a student at Durham. She said 'Unlike President 
Clinton I did inhale.'

But, the ganja classico must go to Boris Johnson, Tory MP. Responding 
to an Oxford contemporary who said Johnson had never taken drugs, the 
Tory MP for Henley said: 'This is an outrageous slur...of course I've 
taken drugs.'
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart