John Mahama
Former President John Dramani Mahama is appearing to urge the electorate to vote for President Akufo-Addo and his New Patriotic Party (NPP) government in the December general election after saying they have been in power for eight years.
The ‘4 More 4 Nana’ campaign mantra for President Akufo-Addo thus received an unexpected impetus from the NPP’s main opponent, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), in the December polls.
The NDC flagbearer, who is staging a comeback after being defeated heavily in 2016 as incumbent by the then NPP candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo, on Wednesday committed the high-profile gaffe when he appeared to call for four more years for his opponent in this year’s presidential race.
The former President, shortly after registering in his hometown of Bole in the Savannah Region, spoke to the media, during which he inadvertently ascribed eight years to the man he is willing to unseat.
Minutes after registering as a voter, Mr. Mahama urged people to get onto the register and vote in the general election on December 7 against the NPP.
He was even sitting in the chair used by the Electoral Commission (EC) to take photographs of registrants when he started campaigning, calling on the electorate to reject the NPP administration.
Using the opportunity to take issues with the flagship projects of President Akufo-Addo as he displayed his voter ID card, an irony anyway, having kicked against the compilation of a new register, Mr. Mahama said the incumbent administration was a non-performer.
“Let us register and kick out this non-performing government. It has been eight years of abandoned projects; eight years of failed promises. One-village one-dam has not materialized,” he told reporters as the audience laughed after noticing the gaffe and later cheered him on.
Voting Elephant
Mr. Mahama’s gaffe is similar to when his Communications Minister, Dr. Edward Omane Boamah, in the latter stages of the 2016 campaign, said at an NDC rally that Ghanaians should look for the elephant symbol of the NDC’s opponents, the NPP, and vote for them.
Dr. Boamah is one of the young NDC appointees that Professor Kwamena Ahwoi has admitted in his book that they were groomed as “Babies with sharp teeth” to attack NDC founder, ex-President Rawlings.
Several Ghanaians have questioned whether it was just a slip of the tongue by ex-President Mahama or a preview of the outcome of the next presidential election told accidentally in what was considered the biggest political gaffe over the years.
Even though the NDC leader and flagbearer has handlers, no one interrupted him to tell the audience he had misspoken.
The statement, which is captured in a video that has gone viral on social media, has made some people chuckle and others cringe.
Expectedly, the eight years he gave President Akufo-Addo has attracted a spiritual interpretation, with some NPP members regarding it as a premonition for another defeat of the NDC flagbearer.
Shortly after the verbal goof, social media went agog with the faux pas.
It was unsurprising that owing to the negative fallouts from the blunder, the flagbearer’s social media handlers sought to reverse it but to no avail.
They repackaged the remarks, editing out the positive prediction for the President, but the removal of that segment was obvious, triggering derision of followers of the political conversation in the country.
Political watchers believe the NDC leader’s gaffe-plagued presidential bid will see his popularity plummet again after it suffered a fatal blow from Professor Kwamena Ahwoi’s book entitled: “Working with Rawlings”, which was launched recently.
Watch the video:
By Ernest Kofi Adu