Since abysmally losing the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, Mr. Dramani Mahama has seen the Electoral Commission (EC) and the Supreme Court as his bitterest enemies. When he lost the 2016 presidential elections with an unprecedented difference of more than one million votes, he harboured the funny feeling that the EC stole the election for Nana Akufo-Addo.
The reason why he never voiced it out or went to court was that the difference was so huge that nobody would have believed him if he had complained. So he kept his pain on his chest and started growing lean. Poor guy!
One of the principles of Judo is that strike and strike your opponent so hard that when he falls down he will not be able to rise again. This was what Nana Akufo-Addo did to the accomplished loser. Mahama shed tears after losing that election but as the sages say, “only the one who cries in the rain knows where his tears are coming from.”
When he looked around and couldn’t get any sympathiser, he blamed the supporters of the NPP of harassing his supporters even though he had no prove. He continued to cry over his broken pot until 2020 came knocking on his door.
When he again lost that election, he rushed to his arsenal of war drums and started beating. To start with, he accused the EC of stealing the election for Nana Akufo-Addo again. His reason was that he won more parliamentary seats so to him it stood to reason that he was elected as president. The man ignorantly could not distinguish between parliamentary and presidential elections.
The lust for power blinded his eyes to see the reality. He was dazed. He again brought out his war talking drums and called his supporters to hit the streets to demonstrate. Like zombies, his supporters, including NDC Members of Parliament and respectable ladies and gentlemen of his defeated party hit the streets across the length and breadth of the country, burning tyres and destroying state properties.
It took pressure from the good and reasonable people of this country to convince him to go to court. He went to court and lost through a unanimous decision which he continues to kick and yell against.
In fact, he has shamefully refused to congratulate Nana Akufo-Addo, the winner of that election, three years down the line. His blockheaded advisers might have wrongfully asked him not to congratulate the winner because he, Mahama, had gone around telling whosoever cared to listen that he was the ‘president-elect’.
Again, he started beating his well oiled war drums, calling the ruling of the Supreme Court as ‘travesty of justice’, and using unprintable words against judges of the Supreme Court. He sadly failed to understand that it was the same Supreme Court that declared him the winner of the 2012 Presidential Election when candidate Nana Akufo-Addo went to court to seek redress.
Even though the decision of the Supreme Court was virtually a split decision, candidate Akufo-Addo accepted the verdict in good faith, and called on his supporters to forget and move on. He wisely hit the road running again, chasing the Golden Fleece.
When Mr. Mahama again lost the 2020 Presidential Election, he went to Techiman in the Bono East Region and told the world on a local FM station that the 2024 General Election was going to be ‘do or die’ affair. The worst comment he made that day was when he told his listeners that this time around his party will not seek any redress at the Supreme Court if he loses the 2024 Presidential Election.
His comment stands to reason that he will usurp power through whatever means, damn the Supreme Court of Ghana. So you see how desperate the man is? The man is acting like what the Akans call ‘otofuor’ (Evil person).
When ‘otofuor’ is about to die, he puts its hands on the shoulders of many people, and enters the grave together with them. Mahama thinks when he causes the nation to erupt into bloody chaos and he is to die, he will not go alone. The man is on a collective suicide mission but he will fail because Ghanaians have wised up.
Sometimes I begin to wonder what Mr. Mahama wants from Ghanaians before he could rest his troubled soul. This is a man who was an Assemblyman, a Presiding Member, MP for three 4-year terms, Deputy Minister, substantive Minister, Vice President and crown everything with the ultimate prize, the Executive President of Ghana, a country of 35 million souls. Habba, Bole/Bamboi Champion Atta!
Recently, when he was addressing NDC supporters, he admonished the EC not to dare steal the 2024 General Election for anyone, including himself. If he believes that the EC could rig elections, then any reasonable person will now know that the NDC was a beneficiary of the rigging machine of the EC according to perceived assertion.
Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, the former First Lady and former 1st Chairperson of the NDC, once told Ghanaians that, the NDC had never won a fair election in this country. We are living witnesses to what happened in the 1992 and 1996 General Election and so we believe the former First Lady. That is why the Akans say, “Atwamene biara suro ayeya da” (He who slights the throats of people fear to lie supine).
But should we resign ourselves to fate, considering the fact that Mr. Mahama told Ghanaians in 2020 that as for the NDC, they have their roots in the AFRC and PNDC revolutions so when it comes to unleashing violence no one could beat them? They say to be forewarned is to forearmed. A 24/7 vigilance by the state security should be focused on Mr. Mahama and his group of blood thirsty hounds.
The sages say, “Once bitten twice shy.” When the late Flt Lieutenant Rawlings started scheming to launch a Coup d’etat in 1981, the then Special Branch (SB) of the Ghana Police Service warned Dr. Hilla Limann and his government but the government did not heed to the warning.
Before the Limann government could say ‘Jack Robin’, Rawlings did strike. What followed during the tenure of office of the junta is too fresh and nasty for anyone to forget. As for the operatives of the Special Branch who were trailing Rawlings and his diabolical bunch of criminal-minded drunken and drugged soldiers, greater number of them was callously murdered.
Rawlings went further to disband the Special Branch and replaced it with the Bureau of National Intelligence (BNI). I will continue to admonish Mr. Kwasi Pratt to publish again the names and towns of the 268 full-blooded Ghanaians who got vanished in this country without any trace since 1982 when Rawlings seized power.
Kwasi Pratt published the names in the defunct Top Newspaper so he cannot say he has lost the information. This guy with a forked tongue should stop the daily ugly ranting he has been making and help the families who lost their loved ones during the wish-to-be-forgotten bloody revolutionary days to know the truth, so that the continuous pain in their hearts would be healed.
Only truth can mend a broken heart. Yes, Rawlings is dead and gone but crime has no status bar. Physicians of the utmost fame have recommended that cigar smoking is good for septuagenarians like me, so I am contemplating going back to my cigar-smoking heydays!!!
By Eric Bawah