When the ordinary Ghanaian wakes up from bed each morning, his or her worry is not the gripes that overfed, bitter and yet still greedy fat-cat politicians vent out.
So, when party guns and their mis-bred, misled fingerlings holler on the airwaves on issues that are not rocket science, but within our grasp and capabilities, including affordable housing, job creation, good/accessible roads that facilitate economic growth and development at basic levels, we should be worried.
Particularly so, when a former president, a former vice-president, a former MP, a former assemblyman, and a former running mate fails to offer refreshing development alternatives but muddies the waters for political benefit, we have every cause to be alarmed.
Ripples
The propaganda that then running mate John Mahama and his paymasters pushed General Secretary Johnson Asiedu Nketia to pipe is what is replaying today, after John Mahama failed to sustain that lies that brought him and his late boss to power.
Then, having degraded the educational system and bred nitwits, he succeeded in selling that ‘nonsense change’ for them.
He had to struggle to win a controversial election in 2012, and eventually got exposed for his incompetence in managing the economy, woefully losing by over a million votes in 2016 and over 500,000 in 2020. Not even a ‘pet’ appointment to the Electoral Commission could save him in 2016.
Election petition concert
Again, when he lost in 2020, fearing reactions from his own corner, based on his political future, he organised the same madding elements, led by now fading General Secretary Johnson Asiedu Nketia, to rock the Electoral Commission, by fudging figures and spreading false information to his grassroots base, which he would later describe as illiterates who could not monitor the voting processes.
Later, he would employ half-baked MPs and lawyers to concoct suits to file at the Supreme Court that would be described by his own party leaders in Parliament as ‘Election Concert’.
We have seen it all before
As a son of a former top appointee under President Kwame Nkrumah and appointee in the Jerry Rawlings administration, Mahama would be among the first to know that power is fleeting. You are on top today and next term, you are walking the streets, unsung, like a Muammar Gaddafi or Iddi Amin or even Kwame Nkrumah in Guinea.
Since 2013, the National Democratic Congress, under John Mahama, and those who defied Jerry Rawlings and Harry Sawyer and brought him to power through the window, has acted in a manner that shows it is committed to applying roughhouse means to access power.
We are surprised that Mahama and his band are caught in that dream when they know that roughhouse politics died long ago in Ghana after Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah himself had known that it could be sustained.
The false propaganda that Ghana’s election is about who occupies the EC’s chair or screams shrillest, or who lies most vicious cannot be sustained. After the NDC had tried hard to keep the educational sector downgrade, and with the new reforms providing hope even for SHS dropouts, it is becoming evident that Mahama and his aprons can only dwell on violence as a tool to access power.
Credibility and competence
Thank God that since President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was inducted into office, it is dawning on Ghanaians that governance is about competence, credibility and partnerships that work out in bringing about development.
With his image sullied globally, it is evident that Mahama may try anything funny to redeem himself, though he hasn’t proven to Ghanaians that he could deliver under Prof Atta Mills or with himself in the seat, or even with him redeemed.
As ordinary citizens keep asking themselves, why would a nation change a winning team for a pack of thieving liars and spineless propagandists, when concrete development, jobs and hope are all around?
In this regard, Mahama may see the 2024 election as a ‘do or die affair, but he certainly cannot get majority of the discerning electorate to see it that way.
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