“If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday” – Paul Buck.
Permit me to be very blunt and irreverent today. Mr. John Dramani Mahama is a shameless politician who has now become a laughing stock to well meaning Ghanaians. In his quest to become the President again, he has turned himself to a jester who should not be taken serious anymore.
In fact, he doesn’t even deserve to be respected as a statesman as we do to Mr. Agyekum Kufuor because of his uncouth utterances. He has stooped too low to be counted as an honest politician who wants to rule this country of thirty million souls.
This is a man who ungentlemanly uses words like ‘stupid’, ‘foolish’, ‘silly’, ‘baloney’, ‘nonsense’ etc. on the good people of this country, erroneously thinks he is smart. He should by now know that respect is reciprocal.
Sadly, the wisdom of the Lord has eluded him. When candidate Akufo Addo promised to introduce the free SHS in the run-up to the 2016 General Election, candidate Mahama said it was a political gimmick and that it was not feasible. He referred to Nana Addo as a person who desperately wanted to be president by all means, including lying to the people.
He said Nana Addo had no political message hence, his constant pronouncements of free SHS and asked rhetorically,”Where is he going to get money to make SHS free?”. His party, the NDC composed several insulting songs to bastardize the free SHS proposal with one of the leadership of the party saying it could take twenty years before Ghana could make SHS free. Even when the programme took off, Mr. Know-Everything, Okudjato Ablakwa said in a matter of five years, the programme will collapse. I want to keep on reminding Ghanaians of this sordid past because the NDC, led by Mr. Mahama is trying to take a U turn thinking that Ghanaians are shortsighted and forgetful as this Bole/Bamboi bully told us.
He threw a ball against a wall and it is coming back to him. What is not feasible five years ago according to Mahama has so soon become feasible.
Last week when Mr. Mahama met with some polling station agents at Gomoa in the Central Region, he told them that when he comes back to power again as the President of Ghana, he will make sure private schools too are roped in to the free SHS.
According to him he saw no reason why parents whose wards are in the private schools pay taxes but their wards have to pay school fees when other children enjoy free SHS.
If Mr. Mahama understands the meaning of the word ‘silly’ as he used it on those of us who wanted him to return the Ex-Gratia that he had collected for more than twenty years, what he said on free SHS for private schools was silly if not balderdash. He also told another group of Polling station agents in the Central Region that the food being served to students in the SHS is not even fit for dogs to eat. How stupid!
How can a former President of Ghana make this ‘foolish’ statement knowing very well that Headmasters and Headmistresses supervise these schools? By his statement, it stands to reason that these Headmasters and Headmistresses are irresponsible and not up to their tasks of seeing to the welfare of their students. It is an insult to the matrons as well.
Aaah! So free SHS is so feasible that when you even add private schools to the programme it could be possible? Habba, Mahama!. What is this man taking Ghanaians for? Fools?, silly?, idiots?, unwise?, dunderheads, morons?.
May be he thinks we have nothing good embedded in our brains. This man is lucky I have suspended the puffing of my favorite cigars. I would have invited him to go for a standby dictionary in order to understand me well when I decide to go down the gutter after picking unprintable words from my arsenal of the Queen’s Language.
He was the first to throw the gauntlet and I will pick it up for the duel in my time of choosing. Somebody should advice him to go for a crush helmet because what is coming from above will crush him if he fails to wear one. In fact, he has opened his underbelly for Ghanaians to hit him hard. Anyway, who advices this desperate politician? Or is it the case that because of his booty, nobody dare advice him?
Anytime he addresses his gullible NDC supporters, he should not forget that other Ghanaians are also listening.
During the 2012 electioneering campaign, the same Mr. Mahama went to Techiman in the Bono East Region and speaking on Asta FM, a local radio station, he said the National Health Insurance Scheme introduced by the Mr. Kufuor administration was not the best. He said paying premium every year in order to access free medical care was very dangerous and unwise because when one did not get money to pay in a particular year, it meant that person won’t have access to free medical care and the person may die.
He promised that when the NDC came to power NHIS premium will be paid once in one’s life time. That promise convinced many people, especially those in the rural areas who were finding it difficult to pay the premium, to vote for the NDC.
Sadly, when the NDC ruled the country for four years after that hollow promise, the NDC did not only fail to keep that promise but they nearly collapsed the scheme until Nana Addo came to revive it.
Meanwhile, it was the same Mahama, then an MP, who led NDC Parliamentarians to walk out of Parliament when the NHIS Bill was tabled for discussion. And you want me to trust such a character with forked tongue?.
A Russian will say Nyet! (No!). The man called John Dramani Mahama is at it again, trying desperately to put sand into the eyes of unsuspecting Ghanaians for the sake of winning political power. He still harbors that funny feeling that Ghanaians have forgotten all what he said about the NHIS and Free SHS.
I try very much not to discuss the late Professor John Atta Mills because the man was so good. He never insulted anyone like Mahama does and when even he was being insulted he kept quiet. He was a gentleman’s gentleman. But now he belongs to Heaven and the stars spell out his name. But Mr. Mahama always opens the Pandora’s Box for some of us to draw in the fine gentleman in our discussions. During the 2008 electioneering campaign, candidate Atta Mills too went to the Great Lamptey school in Accra and promised the staff and students that when he came to power, the School Feeding programme introduced by Mr. Kufuor will be extended to private schools because their parents too pay taxes to the government.
That promise is now dumped in the dustbin of discarded lies. Like the promise of one-time premium of the NHIS, the NDC communicators do not talk of feeding private school children again. Shame is written all over their faces. God has His own way of exposing liars and tricksters.
They say if you live in a glass house, you don’t throw stones. Mr. Mahama lives in a glass house but he continues to throw stones. He has so many skeletons in his cupboard but he still makes ugly noises. Anytime he gets the opportunity to speak, he takes on Nana Addo and his government as if the government did not do anything good for Ghanaians for the past six years.
For example, he refused to attend Ghana’s Independence Day celebration this year with the excuse that he saw no reason why he should celebrate Ghana’s Independence when the government was not able to import children vaccine. A week after the Independence celebration, the vaccines arrived and now he is silent. Shame!!!.
He thought importing drugs from abroad is like carting cattle from Bole to Accra. I don’t know what is wrong with the man. He is now talking ‘by heart’ May be he has offended the spirit of Sumaila Ndewura Jakpa, the great King of Gonja who was a slave trader.
The man needs the service of an exorcist else he will soon go gaga. We have one in our village but he will demand the heart of a red ant to perform the concoction for him to drink. Full stop.
Eric Bawah