Former President John Mahama
More often than not, one wonders if ex-President John Mahama and his ardent cheerleaders in the NDC party appear to have calculated that they can take Ghanaians in general for political suckers, non-thinkers, or just dismiss them as group of people full of amnesiac tendencies who worry only about the dictates of their “stomachs” at a given moment and nothing else about what tomorrow holds. In this scenario, Ghana’s future prospects stand to suffer with these calibre of political characters and their round-the-clock histrionics.
It is always ridiculous to hear the proverbial “pot trying hard to call kettle the darkest of all household utensils.” Certainly, this has been Mr. John Dramani Mahama’s method of operations. The former president is soaked up in the murky waters of shamelessness and misleading campaign messages owing to his insatiable quest for the nation’s presidency. He will manipulate, exploit, say, and do anything, even if he has to select Satan reincarnated as his running mate to help him win power again.
Across the nation, Mr. Mahama and his NDC cabals with straight faces are actively spreading lies, misrepresenting facts, and possibly indulging in thuggish activities without showing any sign of uneasiness or a sense of accountability when get caught in their tracks. Peace-loving Ghanaians may recall the NDC national chair Mr. Ofosu-Ampofo’s nationwide subversive plot with some party members that was secretly captured on audio tape and leaked to the general public recently.
Undoubtedly, the Mahama-Ofosu Ampofo-Asiedu Nketia-commandeered NDC leadership today has under-the-radar interests in outbreak of violence in the country to reinforce the party’s demented proposition that the Akufo-Addo government is not up to the task of controlling violent activities in Ghana. They know this nefarious storyline sells quickly like hot tea bread at Makola market because more than half of Ghanaian population tend to be gullible and forget too soon, as Mr. Mahama has suggested before when he was president.
When the church elder-cum-national chairman of the main opposition party – Mr. Ofosu-Ampofo – was caught on audio tape heartlessly plotting at one of the NDC’s meetings on how to create violent fears among some groups of Ghanaians, in effect, the current top brass of the party, such as ex-President Mahama, Asiedu Nketia, and many others are encouraging or covertly sanctioning “unprecedented insecurity in Ghana.” This presupposes that if the NDC presidential contender for the 2020 election, for instance, genuinely respects the principles of truth, most likely he will come to sincere terms with the main sources of the perceived “unprecedented insecurity” he claims is engulfing Ghana under President Akufo-Addo’s regime.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the NDC flag bearer and the actions and utterances of his campaign enablers are not consistent with truth as we know it in that how can “peaceful” party leader(s) say when it “comes to violence we’re better than them” and the same insist that their party believes in peaceful democracy? The ominous pattern here can’t be hidden any longer: Let’s find subtle ways to manufacture unsettling conditions here and there, while jumping in front of the troubling situation to accuse the government of taking a long nap in the midst of national uncertainties. So far, this has been Mr. Mahama’s outrageous campaign manuscript.
Day in, day out, the NDC 2020 presidential aspirant appears to be positioning himself trickily as a political survivor—or shall we say a slippery algae that survives on poisonous, sulfuric gas coming from subaquatic volcano eruptions? The point is Mr. Mahama has developed a sly way of talking or skirting around national issues. The trick is to make them seem like he and his party didn’t play immense role in the creation of the current problems; or, as an inept ex-president, he has nothing to do with the genesis of the very thorny issues he is now turning around to blame the current government for not managing them creditably.
Speaking recently in connection with this year’s May Day celebrations, Mr. Mahama, arguably the most incompetent but luckiest Ghanaian to be elected president of the republic, half-heartedly lamented that he is “aware of the unprecedented insecurity in our country, which is becoming a major threat to foreign and domestic investment in our economy.” Moreover, somewhere in the same speech, the ex-president-turned-newly-minted flag bearer of NDC puts up I-feel-your-pain posture, and conveyed to the country’s workers that “through your toils, over the years, we have added to the gains of our forebears. I am, however, aware of the present harsh and hard socio-economic environment within which so much is still expected of you” (May Day 2019, starrfmonline.com).
Here is where many of us get super curious: Was Mr. Mahama also fully “aware” back then as president when the “harshest and hardest socio-economic environment within which so much was expected from Ghanaian workers” was unfolding before him, exactly what socially-engineered programmes his incompetently corrupt administration implemented to help alleviate the problems?
Evidently, Mr. Mahama can see far “better” and “truly emphasize more” with the average Ghanaian workers now that his government is no longer in power. Perhaps the rich JDM’s sudden sociopolitical “transfiguration” has realigned his overall perspectives to focus on the poor; the people-centered programmes he and his eight-year-old NDC government could have done to lessen the socio-economic burdens of the ordinary citizens as the present government is seriously pursuing.
Regardless of whatever perception one harbours for the three-year-old Nana Akufo-Addo government, it will be a sheer display of shortsightedness or an unfortunate reaffirmation of the average Ghanaian “trademark forgetfulness” that the former president once said the country is carelessly noted for, to let Mr. Mahama-NDC off the hook regarding the instigators of the so-called “unprecedented insecurity in Ghana.”
Let no Ghanaian of good conscience underestimates the sociopolitical implications of Mr. Ofosu-Ampofo’s treasonous leaked audio tape, especially as the chairperson of the main opposition party whose current presidential candidate (Mr. D. Mahama) is on an ego trip to attempt to heal his wounded political reputation. If ex-president Mahama wonders why the country may be experiencing “unprecedented insecurity” now, then he and his party followers need honest self-questioning or non-partisan introspection as a major opposition party in Ghana.
Bernard Asubonteng is a US-based writer
By Bernard Asubonteng