John Mahama
The new dimension of politics focusing on the challenges of the society introduced by the Vice President and presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) seems to have dazed his opponents, including the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and its flagbearer, John Mahama.
With less than ten days to the polls, the NDC and the Butterfly Movement have abandoned the bread and butter issues and taken the path of personal attacks.
While civil society groups, religious leaders and the media lose no opportunity to call for issue-based campaign, they are unable to call out the NDC to stay within the civilised norms in its engagements with the people.
The NDC has adopted the campaign of lies, religious and ethnic bigotry to lead the electorate astray. The NDC and its leader, John Mahama, predicted that Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia would never be given the opportunity to lead the NPP because he comes from the North.
Now that their predictions have fallen through, John Mahama, Asiedu Nketia and other NDC leaders are out there in the constituencies postulating some weird reasons why the NPP chose the Vice President as the candidate, thus making it difficult for other leading members of the NPP, especially from the Ashanti Region to lead the party.
Suddenly, the NDC is looking for a temporal alliance with Ashantis, as if that party, either in government or opposition, has ever shown any love to Kumasi and its environs.
We recall that during a similar campaign in 2008, the NDC then led by late Prof J.E. A. Mills promised to introduce a one-time premium for health insurance, but when power was given to them, the NDC experimented with what it called capitation, which was very confusing like John Mahama’s 24-hour economy.
We appeal to the people of the Ashanti Region to be wary of the lies of the NDC, whose leaders have besieged Kumasi with no message to the electorate but outright lies.
In 2020, the disrespectful Sammy Gyamfi threatened officers of the security agencies with dismissals if the NDC won that election, but God handed them another defeat. Ato Forson, the Minority Leader, in his usual linguistic deficiency, is also threatening the security agencies and saying the ongoing recruitment will be cancelled in the unlikely event the NDC comes to power.
The Atta Mills regime did a similar thing in 2009, when the NDC came to power and dismissed recruits from training, which also led to the woes of Colonel Damoah, then Director of Administration of the Ghana Armed Forces.
We reiterate our warning to Ghanaians to reject the NDC and John Mahama on December 7, because they have nothing good for Ghana but gloom and doom.
The NDC is out to settle scores. And Ghana is better off keeping John Mahama and the NDC in opposition to continue with their plans to destabilise our democratic process.
It is a deliberate ploy by the NDC to incite the people against the NPP, otherwise, there is no logic in Speaker Bagbin keeping Parliament under lock and key when there is critical government business to transact. To avoid a future occurrence, the NDC must be made irrelevant in our body politic, if Ghana is to benefit from the bold solutions that will catapult the country to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, under the visionary leadership of Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
The NDC has mounted a crusade to create the impression that the NPP government is a bad manager of the economy, when the John Mahama government laid the foundation for the challenges we face today. Prior to leaving office, the NDC mortgaged our ports to Meridian Port Services for 35 years, granting the company tax exemption to the tune of $832 million, making the Tema Port the most expensive in Africa.
The agreement superintended by the John Mahama government debars the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority from interfering in the operations of the Meridian Port Services, a foreign owned company. And during the bidding process, the apostles of probity and accountability did not allow a major contract like the upgrade of the Tema Port to go through the competitive tendering process.
While this dubious arrangement and others have virtually suffocated our economy through the reckless acts of John Mahama, the NDC today blames the NPP government for the mismanagement of the economy.