Former President John Mahama
Very soon former President John Mahama’s ceaseless attacks on the Free SHS policy will no longer make the headlines.
He has not relented on his smear campaign against the flagship policy of the Akufo-Addo administration as he appears to have adopted it as a cornerstone of his strategy for next year’s elections.
His hot and cold attitude towards the subject has given way to a constant disdain for it. Those who want to find out what his position is on the subject should not look far to satisfy their curiosity.
At first, he hated it and paid monies to people to denigrate it. When he, however, discovered rather late about the repercussions of what he was doing, he quickly changed the tune to the gibberish ‘progressive free SHS’ alternative.
We recall a Bukom woman who was engaged to do an advertisement opposing the policy as one which would compromise the integrity of senior high school education.
As we inch towards the next elections, his true position on Free SHS is no longer ambiguous.
Desperation in politics is especially interesting. It has the potential of reducing an otherwise gentleman to a person whose words no longer sound convincing.
The former President needs a campaign message and appears to have found one in his hatred for the Free SHS policy hence his inability to progress beyond the everyday “we would engage stakeholders to fashion out something different.”
His incessant haranguing of the subject is fast becoming a nuisance.
He is reported to have promised to build so many senior high schools within the first 90 days of assuming the reins of government; that surely sounds like a sitcom script.
The schools he built on snake-infested bush paths to the structures on the outskirts still remain one of the many wonders of his administration, not being utilized for the purpose for which they were built. For the people of this country to entrust the management of their fatherland to him once more would be an unpardonable blunder. If they were fooled once not anymore since lessons have sufficiently been learnt.
The Free SHS policy was a major game changer for the Akufo-Addo campaign and it really bludgeoned his opponent on his underbelly. He thought that the propaganda against the Free SHS was enough to neutralize it on the campaign trail. Unfortunately, he lost out.
We can bet that the Free SHS, as he himself said during the moments of his vacillation, “has come to stay”, an irreversible feature of the country’s education architecture.
Trying to change the status quo can only be politically suicidal for any politician seeking to lead this country.
Assuring proprietors of private schools that he would rethink the Free SHS policy through a so-called broad-based consultation can only mean one thing — abandon it.