John Dramani Mahama
I still insist that lies have shorter legs but truth has very long legs. That is why liars always trail behind in any race which involves truth. In fact, between lies and truth, God is not neutral.
Mr. John Dramani Mahama is a pathological liar and he will be remembered by Ghanaians long after he is gone as a statesman who evaded the gospel truth.
The more you expose him for telling lies, the more he doubles down on his antics. The time has come for the good people of this country to tell the guy in his seemingly innocent face that enough of his lies. He should be told that Ghanaians are not so docile to forget what happened a few years ago when he went berserk and vomited lies in order to grab political power. If JDM still believes that Ghanaians are shortsighted and forgettable, he should revise his notes because not all of us are shortsighted as he thumped our noses and told us a few years ago. Some of us are walking Encyclopedias.
I thought the argument as to which government introduced the National Health Insurance has been brought to close after the records were set straight by many people, until Mr. Mahama met the media recently and vomited his lies on the issue again. Somebody should refer him to this piece so that he will stop disturbing our ears with his naked lies on NHIS. Enough, they say, is enough. The issue is gradually becoming an embarrassment to him but surely not to somebody like me who knows better as far as the issue is concerned than Mr. Mahama who has refused to learn.
From the days of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah until Rawlings came storming into the political arena with his gun toting drugged, drunk and unruly soldiers to usurp power, Ghanaians were enjoying almost free medical care. In the early eighties when Rawlings, the founder of NDC held the nation at ransom, he introduced the Cash and Carry system of health delivery.
It meant that when you were sick and you decided to go to hospital, and you did not have money, you had to stay home and eventually die. Because Rawlings was a dictator, we had no Parliament to debate on the introduction of the deadly Cash and Carry system of health delivery. All along, we had to silently endure the pain until former President Kufuor came to power. What could we have done since the Culture of Silence was in full operation?
In 1992, the St. Theresa’s Hospital, a health facility owned by the Roman Catholic Church in Nkoranza in the Bono East Region launched what was called Nkoranza Community Health Plan (NCHP). This was in response to the inability of residents of Nkoranza and its surrounding villages to access health care, especially hospitalization, following the introduction of the Cash and Carry system of health delivery.
Serious campaign was launched to propagate the plan and when people bought into the idea, the Nkoranza St. Theresa’s Hospital Mutual Health Insurance Scheme was introduced. The scheme became so successful that residents from surrounding districts like Atebubu, Techiman, Kintampo, etc came to Nkoranza to register.
When Candidate Kufuor was campaigning in the 2000 General Election, he promised Ghanaians that when voted into power he would cancel the Cash and Cary Health delivery because it was a killer programme. Like the Free SHS which was promised by President Akufo- Addo, some of us were skeptical and questioned how Mr. Kufuor will get money to execute his dream.
Luckily for Ghanaians, when Mr. Kufuor came to power, he immediately set up a team of experts to plan how the Cash and Carry criminal programme could be removed in order to save lives. Mr. Philip Akanzige who was in charge of the Nkoranza St. Theresa’s Mutual Health Insurance Scheme was invited to Accra to join the team and share his experience with the fine brains assembled by the Gentle Giant.
The team came out with the National Health Insurance Scheme to be operated on pilot basis. As time rolled by the scheme covered the whole country. The multi-million dollar question is, when then did John Mahama and the NDC introduce NHIS? Stand up and answer me quickly, Mr. Liar, before I break your jaw with one word from my arsenal of English vocabulary!
During the 2008 electioneering campaign, Mr. Mahama went to Techiman and speaking on Asta FM, one of the radio stations in the town, he told listeners that Kufuor’s NHIS was not the best because as poor farmers, if you could not get money to pay your premium, it meant you will have to die because you will not get money to buy drugs.
According to this shameless liar, if by the grace of God Ghanaians voted for the NDC, the government will introduce a One-Time Premium. In his view, if you pay your premium, the insurance will cover you till you die. Habba, Malam John? That promise which was carried by many print and electronic media across the country sunk in so well that it was the main reason why the poor voted for the NDC. In those days some people were finding it difficult to register with the scheme with a mere one hundred and fifty old Ghana Cedis. So you can imagine how people welcome the promise of One-Time Premium.
“By the grace of God” the NDC came to power in 2008 when the late Atta Mills won by a mere forty eight thousand votes. Ghanaians waited patiently for the promise of a One-Time Premium to come to reality. For close to two years we never heard of the issue again until the then Deputy Minister of Health under the Mills administration went to parliament and told the august house that if the One-Time premium will be feasible, then Ghanaians will have to pay four million old Cedis a year as NHIS premium.
That pronouncement ended the dream of One-Time premium. The rest is history as the NHIS started a nose dive until the Nana Addo-led administration came to revive the scheme. So Mr. Mahama, tell us the time you ever introduce the NHIS. Indeed, as a Christian do you know the effect of lying to the people you want to rule?
No wonder Madam Joyce Bawah, the spokesperson of Mr. Mahama has made it clear that Mr. Mahama will never take part in any Presidential Debate. The truth is that the issue of One-Time premium and the free SHS will surely pop up and Mr. Mahama will be pushed to the wall.
In my silent moment, I try to forgive Mr. Mahama for his continues lies and misinformation. The reason is that he and his team have deliberately tried to hide and refuse to speak about the legacies of the late Prof. Mills, Mahama’s mentor and political godfather. All projects embarked upon by the meek and mild professor have been attributed to JDM. Mahama and his cohorts make it look as if for the three years that Mills ruled this country he did nothing as far as development projects were concerned.
Mr. Mahama never hesitates to dwarf the achievements of the man who chose him as his running mate. Mr. Mahama is not only a liar but also ungrateful. Apart from Mr. Koku Anyidoho who consistently trumpets the achievements of Prof. Mills, nobody in the NDC even wants to mention the name of the late President who carved a niche for himself as a man of peace.
But for the efforts of Koku Anyidoho and the kindness of President Akufo-Addo, the Asomdwee Park, the burial place of Prof. Mills would have been left to rot. That is why Koku the Bull, continues to kick like a bull from Bole|Bamboi. God is watching and He will surely deliver His judgement at the appropriate time of His choosing. Today, I am hunched with emotion and at times like this I feel like going back to my cigar smoking heydays.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT. “You have won the 2012 election but free SHS won the campaign. If you don’t implement free SHS and NPP comes back to power and implements the programme, it will haunt the NDC for many elections to come”– J.J Rawlings to Mr. Mahama in 2012. (Ate Gya!!!)
By Eric Bawah