Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia
During the run-up to last Saturday’s general election, the presidential candidates, under the auspices of the National Peace Council in collaboration with the Institute of Democratic Governance signed a peace pact.
At such a ceremony, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, who doubled as the presidential candidate of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) made a very profound statement.
While his contenders whined about the possibility of rigging and gave conditions to accept the results, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia pledged to work for a free and fair election, saying at the end of the day, “Ghana wins, Peace reigns.”
Indeed, at the end of the exercise last Saturday, contrary to threats of violence, Ghana has strengthened its position as the bastion and beacon of democracy in Africa. We have deepened our democratic credentials by the concessions made by the Vice President.
Mahamudu Bawumia by accepting defeat, congratulated the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate John Mahama for his decisive victory. Ironically, John Mahama has till date not congratulated President Akufo-Addo on his electoral victory in 2020, even after his election petition at the Supreme Court was shot down. That is the spirit and principles of democratic governance, which enjoin the stakeholders to accept defeat while the victors will celebrate in moderation.
The people of Ghana have spoken, after all the sovereign will resides in the people. We cannot do anything to the verdict of the people even if we disagree with those who voted for the NDC. We have thus adopted the attitude of wait and see as we all await John Mahama’s magic wand to “reset” Ghana.
The two main candidates, incidentally from the North, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia and former President John Mahama both put together policies to place Ghana on a better pedestal from January 2025.
While Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia promised bold solutions to bring the country into the fold of countries spearheading the Fourth Industrial Revolution, John Mahama talks about small poultry farms and 24-hour economy. Between the two, the majority of Ghanaians decided to vote for John Mahama, apparently out of the belief that President Akufo-Addo has imposed untold hardships on them.
The chorus from most people is that Ghana is hard, and that they cannot make ends meet. The outcome of the polls clearly represent the mindset of John Mahama when he asked the Ga people whether digitalisation can buy them kenkey and fish?
We will not be out of order to say that the people prefer food on their table instead of the bold solutions to address the country’s development challenges.
We recall the statement our first President, Kwame Nkrumah, is reported to have made after his overthrow in 1966 thus: “if I knew Ghanaians preferred milk and sugar to development, good health and education, I would have provided the two commodities in abundance”.
We think President Akufo-Addo should have provided the bread and butter in abundance and at very cheap prices instead of the audacious Free Senior High School (SHS), infrastructure development and the Agenda 111. That way the Akufo-Addo government would have saved money to provide cheap merchandise to the people.
John Mahama joined the debate about the cost of living, comparing prices of items such as cement and petrol and also the exchange rate, inflation and interest rate.
We are waiting patiently for John Mahama’s magic wand to reduce prices drastically to meet the expectations of the people.
The NDC has a history of disappointment as exemplified by the failure of the late President Atta Mills to honour his campaign pledge to reduce the prices of petroleum products drastically, and he ended up increasing it astronomically. Campaign promises are difficult to fulfil, but it is our hope that John Mahama will live up to the high expectations of those who voted for him.
We urge Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia and his team not to bemoan the devastating defeat. It must offer the party leadership of Stephen Ntim and Justin Kodua Frimpong to find out what went wrong and devise strategies to put the NPP back on winning ways.
We think the party structure broke down to the extent that the leadership from the polling stations, the electoral area, the constituency, regional to national were more interested in calling themselves delegates because of the associated benefits instead of working hard for the party to ‘break the eight’.
These officers were merely shouting the slogan, ‘breaking the eight’, instead of working hard to get the voters to the polling booths last Saturday. The failure of the party leadership is reflected in the abysmal performance, and they must be called upon to account properly for their stewardship.