President John Mahama
President John Mahama requested for a 100-day honeymoon period from Ghanaians before assuming the presidency.
Whatever that means for us, it is about being given a grace period during which he will be allowed to get his traction in governance and therefore spared opposition queries.
Whether the President enjoyed the honeymoon he asked for or not, it is something only the public can tell. It does appear though that there was no honeymoon after all.
Be it as it may, it has been a hundred days of Mahama presidency and there are a lot of things to say about the period.
It has been eventful and the period riddled with multiple good governance breaches.
Yesterday, a lot of commentaries were made to commemorate the period, and most of them were on point.
The Mahama administration can be measured against the promises it made during the campaign season. It was a government which hit the ground running with abuses.
Upon the assumption of leadership by the National Democratic Congress (NDC), one of the traits observed was the coup d’état attributes at play.
Vehicles which should not be seized were dispossessed from their owners simply because such persons had something to do with the outgone government, and so their possessions be snatched at gunpoint, even in the middle of the streets.
The unfolding incidences of incivility across the country expectedly made headline news. So bad were the unfolding developments that observers wondered whether there had been a coup d’état or a revolution.
Richard Jakpa, who today represents the Gestapo of the Mahama administration, has been all over the place raiding the residences of former appointees with such recklessness that the question was posed whether President Mahama was aware of the happenings. The conclusion is that the Commander-in-Chief knows about them because after all silence means consent and, besides, the daily security briefings should encompass such incidents.
In spite of the many breaches committed by rogue national security elements, they have not received reprimands from the Presidency. This is why the conclusion is that he sanctioned the raids and the human rights abuses.
In the first hundred days, there has been an unprecedented degradation of the environment by illegal miners. Galamsey, as it is otherwise referred to, was one of the issues President John Mahama campaigned on. He is reported to have said that he would stop illegal mining in less than a month of his assuming the presidency. A hundred days into the presidency and the illegal activities have rather worsened, with NDC supporters fingered in the illegality.
Within the first hundred days, we have observed the government renege on its promise to raise the cost of cocoa when it comes to power. Cocoa politics was used lavishly in the cocoa-producing areas where farmers were told that the Akufo-Addo government was ripping them off. Today, an opportunity has reared its head for the NDC government to do so, but it has announced it won’t.
Someone remarked that Ghana is saddled with a scamming government which used propaganda to come to power. We agree with the remark.
A government which promised the youth of this country jobs when it campaigned on this should be the last to be seen dismissing the youth from their places where they have been working long before 2024.
As for the 24-hour economy slogan, it remains but a pipedream.
Internal security has escaped through the window as the Bawku crisis, which President Mahama promised to deal with within a short period of his assumption of political leadership, remains a conundrum and worsening by the day.
A scam is an apt tag for the government in its first hundred days of governance. The coming days cannot be even better.