Shows Desperation after Cocoa Propaganda Fails
By Prince Ahenkorah
The optics were striking. A contingent of Minority MPs, led by Chief Whip Frank Annor-Dompreh, descending on cocoa farms in the Ashanti Region the NPP’s electoral fortress singing, dancing, and hurling insults at President John Dramani Mahama. The occasion? A government decision to reduce the cocoa producer price in the face of collapsing global prices.
But beneath the choreographed merriment lies a political class struggling to find its footing against an administration making tough economic choices.
In a video that has since circulated widely, Annor-Dompreh crossed lines that even his parliamentary colleagues have occasionally warned him about. His target was President Mahama’s decision to acquire a presidential jet a move the government has defended as necessary for presidential security and efficiency.
“If you are sensible enough to borrow to buy a plane and you cannot use sense to borrow to support farmers, then when it is election time let the plane go and vote for you,” Annor-Dompreh thundered from a cocoa farm.
The Nsawam Adoagyiri MP, known in parliamentary circles for his combative style, appeared to be suggesting that the same logic that justified borrowing for the jet should have compelled the government to borrow to prop up cocoa prices, regardless of global market realities.
Franklin Cudjoe, president of policy think tank IMANI Africa, could only caption the video with one word: “Jesus.”
This is the same Annor-Dompreh who, during a heated exchange in Parliament, was labelled a “silly boy” by Petroleum Commission CEO Emeafa Hardcastlean altercation that saw him demanding a formal retraction and sanctions.
The same lawmaker who last year incited NPP supporters in Ablekuma North to engage in fisticuffs with NDC opponents. The same MP who has repeatedly been called upon by the Speaker to retract unparliamentary language directed at colleagues across the aisle.
His latest outburst, political watchers note, reflects a pattern: when argument fails, attack.
The government’s decision, announced by Finance Minister Dr Cassiel Ato Baah Forson in February, reduced the producer price to GH¢41,392 per tonne and GH¢2,587 per bag. The trigger? A sharp fall in global market prices and mounting liquidity pressures within the sector.
President Mahama, in his second State of the Nation Address, framed the move as painful but necessary.
“Revising cocoa producer price was a difficult decision to take, but I had to take them to ensure our collective well-being,” he told Parliament. “The difference between economic hardship and avoiding the same is the exercise of sound economic judgement.”
His predecessor’s government, he implied, had borrowed its way into a hole from which Ghana is still climbing out. Repeating that pattern would be irresponsible.
Across the border in Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer, authorities announced a significant reduction in farm-gate prices effective March 1. Farmers there are now receiving between 800 and 1,000 CFA francs per kilogram a steep drop from the previous 2,800 CFA francs. The reason: mounting unsold stock.
Yet Ghana’s opposition continues to agitate for reversal, with Dr Isaac Yaw Opoku, Ranking Member on Parliament’s Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs Committee, threatening drastic action.
“I will strip naked and, together with the minority, protest in ‘adagya mu’ and march to the Presidency,” the Offinso South MP declared at Kunsu in the Ahafo Ano South West District.
The reaction from farmers themselves has been mixed. Some have taken to the streets, particularly in the Western North Region, demanding a reversal. Others travelled to COCOBOD headquarters in Accra seeking audience with management, only to spend the night outside before pleading with workers for transportation money to return home.
A segment of farmers has accepted the reduction in good faith, demanding instead that the burden be shared across the value chain. COCOBOD management, led by CEO, has responded with salary reductions of 10 to 20 per cent until the end of the season a gesture of shared sacrifice.
What the NPP’s farm-gate theatre reveals is an opposition searching for traction. With the government making economically difficult but necessary decisions, and with regional neighbours taking similar steps, the space for populist agitation narrows.
Annor-Dompreh’s dance routines and insults may play well to partisan crowds, but they do nothing to address the structural challenges facing Ghana’s cocoa sector challenges that accumulated over years of unsustainable practices.
As one political analyst put it: “You can’t borrow your way to prosperity, and you can’t dance your way out of economic reality.”
The court of public opinion will render its verdict in due course. But for now, the contrast is stark: one side governing, the other performing.