NPP MUST STRIVE NOT TO JOIN NDC IN THE GUTTER

It is certainly clear that the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) is set to repeat its 2008, 2012 and 2016 campaign strategies in which playing the dirty, dangerous ethnic card was a key.

Professor Kwamina Ahwoi only affirmed that, by floating his controversial ‘Working with Rawlings’ book – Koku Anyidoho, only a couple of days ago ago, echoing that sentiment when he revealed that top NDC guns approached him to attack NDC founder Jerry John Rawlings.

The decision to divert attention from the core issues involved in the Agyapa Royalties issues, and attack personalities in government, while at the same time attacking their traditional roots, is only part of the grand scheme by desperate John Mahama and his band of ‘Babies With Sharp Teeth’ to relive their barbarian war-game for the December polls.

When everybody thought that the NDC’s gripe over Agyapa was more inclusiveness in rolling out the initiative, which is only a continuum of what the NDC had believed was the way out, they mysteriously got lost in the original argument, perpetrating the ethnicity indecency.

As it is evident now, not only is Mahama fuelling up the ethnic venom; his running mate Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang is also defending it in the same vehemence that Bolgatanga Central MP Isaac Adongo provided the initial sauce.

But that is because while the Ahwois who dreamt up the diabolic strategy would not themselves enter the fray, they are sure to be the ultimate business beneficiaries, should the entrenched ethnicity war escalate and bear political fruit. And, we ask if Mahama can do that against Bono and Ahafo, indigenous Accra and the northern regions or Fante and Volta constituencies. The answer, certainly, is no.

But that is what exposes Mahama as a political gangster and an unscrupulous politician, in spite of his seeming innocence and ‘good looks’ before our largely vulnerable electorate.

Unfortunately, we have not seen any of the traditional authorities even diplomatically call Mahama to order, even as he pigheadedly defends himself to the hilt.

Temptation

The temptation, at this point, is for the governing NPP to waste precious time replying Mahama, instead of reminding the people about where we have come from, courtesy the reckless misrule of John Mahama, and where we are safely headed, courtesy the vision and capacity of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Of course, acid tongues pervade every political party and space and, as the NDC itself experienced in 2012 and 2016, it cannot forever be champions in using acid tongue as an argument.

All the same, to show the difference, we believe it remains in the interest of the NPP to keep on trumpeting its achievements and vision in the hope that the young, teeming beneficiaries of its benevolent initiatives would be the ambassadors and messengers who would lead the crusade against the political insanity being sold the electorate by John Mahama and his goons.

Mahama knows well in advance that he has lost the battle and that the only way to put up any semblance of a fight – like the tortoise in the fight against the hungry lion – is shake itself into an orgy of cold sweat.

That is why the NPP needs tact and focus to seal victory in 2020 – with only three months to go.