John Mahama
We are in very interesting times. Suddenly, some magicians have emerged in our midst promising to end our woes the moment we give them the mandate again to rule over us.
Others are promising to build bridges where there are no rivers, while the super magician of our times is promising to construct a canal from the sea in Accra or the coast to Kumasi.
In a very bizarre twist, some of our youth are following such a character blindly as if they have no plan for their own future. Governance is not a tea party or child’s play for the people of Ghana to be engaged in “ma try ma kw3.”
It is for this reason that we keep reminding the people that as we find our way to the polling booths to cast the ballot that some ignorantly referred to as a “token of participation” on December 7, we must have our eyes or focus on our future.
Casting of the ballot or that simple democratic process has very grave ramifications. That decision landed us in four years of ‘dumsor’, during which period lives were lost and livelihoods destroyed by the political party in government then, whose perennial leader, John Mahama, is all over the place promising to “reset” the country.
Now, very little is said about the 24-hour economy of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) that former Trades Union Congress (TUC) Secretary General, Yaw Baah, as if possessed by an Indian spell described as a “game changer.” With just about a few days to the elections, the NDC has changed gear.
The strategy now is to attack the record of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government and by extension, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, flagbearer of the NPP, without prescribing solutions to the challenges.
Ghanaians know we are in challenging times, but it is not enough for John Mahama to be comparing prices of goods and services between his era and that of the present government.
That kind of analysis is very simplistic and devoid of the elementary logic that underpins the dynamics of geopolitics. Less than a decade ago, John Mahama, faced with the complexities of the job market, told the group that came together as the Unemployed Graduates Association that he is not a magician to give the youth jobs.
An appointee of John Mahama, Rashid Pelpuo, also looked the youth straight in the face and told them if they have nothing to do, they should go to the roadside to cut grass to sell to cattle breeders or break stones to sell to estate developers.
Today, these same characters have turned coat and promising to give jobs to the youth, and perhaps true to the claim by John Mahama that Ghanaians suffer from short memories, some of our compatriots are following the NDC.
Is it not amazing that John Mahama goes to the campuses of the universities of education to promise teacher trainees manna from heaven when in 2016 he denied them trainee allowances even if the people would vote against him?
Same for nursing trainees, some of whom get carried away by the NDC propaganda. That was why a group of more discerning trainees responded recently that “allowances delayed under NPP are better than allowances denied under John Mahama’s NDC.”
Now typical of the NDC propaganda, John Mahama is today running away from his insulting remarks that he is not a magician to be putting money in their pockets through employment creation. He said then in 2016 that the unemployment rate, especially among the youth, is high because many of the unemployed graduates are not skilled, indicating that he is not a magician to put money in their pockets.