Former President John Dramani Mahama has claimed that it is the ruling New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) intolerant posture that is making professionals shy away from the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).
He called the NPP ‘vindictive’ and said because of them, professionals fear to identify with NDC for fear of victimisation.
He also said at an annual conference of the NDC’s Professionals Forum in Accra on Thursday that it has been reported to the leadership of the NDC that some of their agents at the polling stations during the December 7, 2020 general election were illiterates.
Thursday Sermon
The twice defeated NDC flag bearer spoke about a wide range of issues at the forum and did not hesitate in attacking the NPP.
He said professionals associating with the NDC are victimised at work places by the NPP government without substantiating the claim.
He said the NDC professionals had done well in putting the event together, saying, “I think one of the good things that Pro Forum has done is to increase the confidence of our professional groups in terms of being identified as being proud members of the NDC.”
Mr. Mahama said that “we have a lot of people who support the NDC but they hide under the covers and are not willing to show their faces as supporters of NDC,” adding “of course, you can understand why. With people who are so vindictive, I mean for many of them who are still in service, I mean showing their faces is often dangerous.”
Not NDC
He then claimed that “it’s not the same when NDC is in power. I mean people, very freely identify with the NPP when NDC is in power and they don’t suffer any adverse consequences for it but it’s not the same when they (NPP) are in power.”
He continued that “there’s a lot of vindictive hunting down of people who are believed to be NDC and taking them out of jobs. So, this confidence and pride is making more people join the Pro Forum and it’s a very good thing.”
Election U-Turn
After claiming the NDC won the election but the Electoral Commission (EC) rigged the process for the NPP, Mr. Mahama has now turned around to say the NDC might have lost the election because some of their agents at the polling stations were illiterates.
He said at the forum that “every region was asked to account for its performance in the 2020 elections. They came with reports and there was one region who stated that ‘some of our party agents were illiterate, they could not read or write…and the chairman asked, but who made them party agents?”
He explained that “so it is obvious that they themselves have started doing a review of what went right or what went wrong. What they did well, leading to a positive outcome and what they could have done better.”
2024 Contest
Mr. Mahama said the NDC was deploying professionals and more educated personnel to monitor the 2024 elections at various levels and said a lot more expertise is required in many parts of the electoral process, such as the collation of election results.
“We must ensure that we have more professionals and more educated people coming into play in respect of policing and monitoring the elections at the grassroots level. Collation of results is an important activity that the expertise that you people carry can help with, in terms of collating the party’s results in good time and also transmitting the results as most of you do in your professional work with information technology.”
In September, 2020, in the heat of the election campaign, the NDC said it was deploying lawyers to represent the party at all collation centres across the country.
They had said specifically that lawyers of high repute had been trained and would be posted to serve as representatives of the party in all 275 collation centres in the country.
It is unclear if that was even done, looking at their own report that illiterates served as polling agents.
Fresh EC Attacks
After saying illiterate agents contributed to the party’s defeat, Mr. Mahama then turned around to say again that the Supreme Court blocked the NDC from demanding accountability from the Electoral Commission Boss, Jean Mensa.
Interestingly, when he petitioned the Supreme Court for a re-run of the 2020 Presidential Election, Mr. Mahama failed to file a single result declaration form (Pink Sheet) for the court to determine the veracity of his rigging claims.
He did not also testify at the trial but still insisted the EC boss should enter the box to give evidence when he had not been able to convince the judges about his claims against the commission.
In the end, the seven-member panel presided over by the Chief Justice dismissed the petition and Mr. Mahama has since been berating the judges at every opportunity.
“I believe that the law should not be an instrument for partisan purposes. I also believe that the rule of law should mean that one rule for all. The 2021 election petition will go down in history as the profound moment when the Chairperson of the EC opted to evade public scrutiny,” he lamented at the forum on Thursday.
“Everything was done in this trial to prevent the commission from accounting to the people in whose name they hold office,” Mr. Mahama said.
By Ernest Kofi Adu