John Mahama
As Ghana inches towards this year’s general election, all the political parties are on “heat” to take over power.
While the Butterfly Movement led by “serial” defector, John Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen, is propagating the Great Transformation Agenda, the opposition NDC, led by John Mahama, is “preaching” what they call the 24-hour economy to reset the country.
The ruling NPP, under the flagbearership of Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, is touting the gains to be derived from the collective efforts to upgrade the country. As for the rest of the other political parties, they may be in the race to waste our time.
We think that John Mahama is very disingenuous, by selecting the slogan ‘Resetting Ghana’, when he knows that to reset connotes a past order. Under the NDC administration, the “reset” is an euphemism for dumsor, teacher and nursing trainees unpaid allowances, progressively free secondary education that failed to settle the bills of the students, under the watch of Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, then the Education Minister, bus branding, Ford Expedition bribe, Airbus scandal report that has confirmed John Mahama as Government Official One, double salary by some NDC MPs and a litany of very bad governance practices.
We know that the media has the responsibility to hold those who elect themselves to rule accountable to the people. And that was exactly what Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia and former President John Mahama did when they subjected themselves to media scrutiny, beyond the rabble-rousing on the political platforms.
Whether we agree with the positions of Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia and John Mahama is not the issue, but we expect everybody, including Captain Smart, the NDC megaphone masquerading as a journalist, to live the dictum of the French scholar Voltaire thus, “I may detest your views, but I will not deny your right to express them.”
Captain Smart, never loses the opportunity to insult all leaders of the NPP, including President Akufo-Addo and Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia without provocation, while the board and management of Media General look on unconcerned.
Since TV3 is the official network for the NDC campaign, we are not surprised about the utterances of Captain Smart to satisfy his paymasters in the Umbrella Family.
We shall always fight for media freedom for those we disagree with ideologically, but we have zero tolerance for media irresponsibility, hate speech and fake news. On this note, we remind Captain Smart that majority of Ghanaians are not perturbed by his disrespect towards Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia.
The people will decide the verdict on December 7, based on the reality of their state of being, including the benefits of free Senior High School (SHS) and Agenda 111, earmarked to provide the best in healthcare delivery in the history of the country.
Less than a decade ago, the NDC flagbearer was at the helm calling all the shots, denying teachers chalk and salaries, and cancelling teacher and nursing trainees’ allowances, as well as managing persistent dumsor that collapsed businesses and homes, except changing a man into a woman.
Indeed, it is only on the Concert Party show that the actors or the comedians are at liberty to say anything for people to laugh, and that was exactly what John Mahama and his apparatchiks set out to do in Winneba.
So what is the legacy of John Mahama if we are to buy into his criticisms of the Akufo-Addo government that the appointees from head to the lowest levels are corrupt and are engaged in state capture?
We know when it comes to state capture and corruption, John Mahama and his gangs are as clean as the Odaw River. Certainly those who are clean like the Odaw River cannot champion zero tolerance for corruption and state capture.
More often than not, we have no doubt that John Mahama, his running mate, Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang and other leaders of the NDC reflect what they think of Ghanaians, and that is we all have short memories.
If that were not the case, how can John Mahama look Ghanaians in the face to talk about impropriety when those he mounted the podium with in Simpa, collected double salaries as MPs, while in his version of state capture his short memory deny him the knowledge of how he gave out Ghana’s bauxite deposits at Nyinahin to his brother, Ibrahim Mahama, after his heavy defeat in 2016.