The story of King Midas and the Ass’s ears (donkey’s ears) is a classic from Greek mythology we read in Primary 7. And This story fits perfectly into the current situation Ghana has on its hands through the work of the Electoral Commission.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, Pan, the god of shepherds, challenged Apollo to a musical duel. Pan insisted his flute of reeds could produce a more beautiful melody than Apollo’s silly harp. The two agreed on a contest with judges. One of the judges was King Midas.
After hearing the two melodies, all but one of the judges chose Apollo as the winner. But one judge, King Midas, preferred Pan’s tune.
Furious that anyone could prefer a reedy pipe to his musical lyre, Apollo cooed, “I see the problem. It’s your ears. They are too small to hear properly. Let me fix that for you.”
King Midas felt his ears quiver. His ears sprang out, and out, and turned into the large furry ears of an ass. King Midas was horrified. He grabbed his ears. “Pan, help me!” he cried. But Pan, with a quick nervous glance at Apollo, turned his back.
King Midas tried to hide his ears from his subjects by wearing a variety of huge hats, heavy helmets, and bulky scarves. The only person who saw his ears was his barber. King Midas made his barber promise he would never tell a soul.
His barber kept his word. But keeping such a huge secret to himself was driving him crazy. Finally, the barber went up a mountain and almost to the edge of a cliff. He dug a hole in the midst of some reeds. He looked about, to make sure no one was near. Then, he whispered into the hole, “King Midas has the ears of an ass. King’s aaaass ears! King’s aaaass ears!” Having gotten his secret off his chest, he felt much better. He returned home, sure that he had kept his word.
Read More: Jean Mensa calls the 2020 Presidential Elections for Akufo-Addo
Unfortunately for King Midas, the barber had dug right into a piece of echo. Pieces of Echo were scattered all over the mountainous kingdom. In fact, pieces of Echo were scattered all over the world.
Although I suppose some people might think it was only the sound of the wind in the reeds, it was really a piece of Echo, whispering over and over, “King’s aaaass ears, king’s aaaass ears”.
Sound travels well in the mountains, even whispers. It was not long before the entire kingdom knew the king’s secret.
Ghana’s 2020 Elections
In this day and age of technology, nothing done in one country can be hidden forever, because light and sound are carried far across the oceans in a matter of seconds.
It, therefore, beats the imagination of right-thinking persons in the global society that Jean Mensah and his team of commissioners at the Electoral Commission could plot and hatch a plan to rig Ghana’s 2020 presidential elections for the incumbent president who happens to be her auntie’s husband, thinking that the world would just go to sleep over it.
As the verdict by all the other judges pointed to Apollo as the best musician, so do the pink sheets from all 38,622 polling stations give a verdict about the election, however, like King Midas, Jean Mensah has declared a different verdict to the people of Ghana.
In all of the elections in the past, polling station results were the basis for declaring who the winners and losers were. These results, when collated, were sent to the constituency collation centres for the determination of the winners of both the presidential and parliamentary elections in particular constituencies.
While the parliamentary elections ended up being declared by the returning officers in the constituencies, the presidential results were transmitted by fax to the headquarters of the EC, where the final vote tabulations were done for declaration.
At the EC headquarters, each of the parties had the right to crosscheck these figures against the results received from their own agents in the constituencies and where there were discrepancies in any of the figures, these were crosschecked again by the EC before declarations were made.
So in the past, including 2012, when election observers issued their final comments on Ghana’s elections, they were sure that all these processes had been followed through rigorously.
However, for reasons best known to her, and now the suspicion is for the purpose of rigging, Jean Mensa unilaterally altered this process by ordering the regional directors to collate all the constituency results and fax same to the EC headquarters as final regional figures.
This is where the avenue was created for much of the suspected rigging that took place. This piece is not written by a neutral person, but by someone with a vested interest in seeing to it that the course of democracy fought for by our forebears over the past 39 and 40 years is sustained. That is the interest, so if there is any action by any individual or groups of people that has the potential of curtailing the democratic path Ghana has chosen, there is the need to point these out, and if all Ghanaians agree, then corrections are made. Supreme Court should be the last resort.
And in a democratic dispensation with certain inherent flaws in the constitutional order, which have never given Ghana any major constitutional challenges, due to the goodwill of the previous leaders, including John Kuffuor with all of his imperfections, it is expected that every government shall have that same presence of mind to show good faith and goodwill to maintain the sanity that the constitutional order has enjoyed over the past 27 years.
However, from the time of his ascension to the most powerful seat of the land, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has demonstrated enough bad faith and a lack of candor when it comes to dealing with the governance institutions.
From the manner, he orchestrated and removed Charlotte Osei from office to his dealings with the Auditor General, to his latest fracas with his own appointed Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu. All these, including the removal of the Director of Births and Deaths Registry and how that particular issue panned out in the needless new voter registration exercise, demonstrate clearly Akufo-Addo’s characteristic thirst for absolute power in the land.
When the efforts to diminish the voter registration numbers in NDC strongholds, including Volta and Oti regions failed, the next line of action was to ensure that the numbers during the polls were manipulated to suit Akufo-Addo’s agenda. For this, police have confirmed that as many as five Ghanaians lost their lives.
Five Ghanaians whose desire was to ensure that the votes counted at the polling centres and entered on the pink sheets were the votes collated at the constituency collation centres, have been painfully and gruesomely murdered by the murder squad unleashed by Akufo-Addo and his hawks in government on election day and beyond.
The death figures could be a bit higher if a careful check is made from all constituencies. A journalist who was just doing his work in Ablekuma Central was shot in the leg, and as many as 17 other people sustained needless injuries as a result of Akufo-Addo’s inordinate desire to hang n to power.
After many of the regional EC officials sent different results other than the true reflection of votes in the elections to Jean Mensa, the NDC’s officials at the EC sought to help the commissioners to do the proper thing that should be done in such circumstances. Figures should be audited and any lingering doubts cleared before the declaration is made.
However, once she knew her agenda, the chairperson went ahead to declare a semblance of final results to the whole world, and till date, the supposed winners can’t celebrate.
Now her ass’s ears are growing, and Jean Mensa has been trying on all kinds of hats and hairstyles to cover them. Figures have been changed six times already, but we still have a situation where parties with lower figures coming up with higher percentages than parties with higher figures in the presidential polls.
The comedy of electoral errors has turned Ghana into a laughing stock among democratic nations in the world. And with the rigging of the presidential polls, Jean Mensah is also hell-bent on rigging the parliamentary seats for her favorite party.
What was the haste in declaring election results when we had not yet reconciled the figures to ensure that the verdict we deliver represents the exact aspirations Ghanaians collectively voted for?
What did Jean Mensa had to hide or protect in disallowing the due process to go through. She is now telling those aggrieved to go to court, because she knows her uncle has already packed his favorite judges in the Supreme Court bench who may also stoop even lower than the EC boss to make a declaration that favours him.
If there is anybody who needs to go to court today it is Jean Mensa, to clear her name that she hasn’t rigged the elections for Akufo-Addo. If she fails to do this, then the whole world would know the coward that she is, because the verdict out there is that she has rigged the polls.
Jean Mensa, the National Democratic Institute(NDI)-trained election rigging machine can run as far as she can, but she cannot hide her ass’s ears, because they will surely pop out sooner than later.
The same NDI which finances IEA, CDD and CODEO has not uttered a word about the evil activities that beclouded the elections, especially the collation of figures. In its characteristic manner CODEO has churned out figures it was fed with from the media, making nonsense its claim of having deployed more than 4000 observers across the country. What a shame!
And the Executive Director of CDD H. Kwasi Prempeh wrote a comment under a post on Facebook that “The viability of John Mahama’s presidential ambition beyond 2020 will be determined, in large part, by how he handles the aftermath of the 2020 elections. So far, his colleagues in his party are not helping him at all by pushing him in non-asomdwee directions….”
One may ask the likes of Prof. Prempeh what “asomdwee” path they pushed their friend Akufo-Addo on to. You see, the intellectual bigots who think they are the alpha and omega of knowledge in Ghana’s political space is what may one day cause a severe explosion in this land. Most of them don’t care because they are under the protection of the American government through their association with the CIA offshoot called NDI.
One wonders what auditing the likes of Kwadwo Pumpuni Asante also of CDD/CODEO had done before making emphatic statements such as although there were mathematical errors, these were not consequential to the outcome? I thought intellectuals keep telling us to interrogate facts and figures. Has any of them taken the time to audit the figures and reconcile them from stage to stage?
Thankfully, the European Union observer group has shown a semblance of credibility by casting doubts on the transparency of the collation process.
Very soon, the barber cannot hold the secret any longer, the barber will climb to the mountains and whisper into a deep hole, but the echoes will resound through the wind, the trees will carry them, the birds will repeat them, every living thing shall get to know that Jean Mensa has an ass’s ears
