By William
Yaw Owusu
Friday March
23, 2018
Former President John Dramani Mahama is still crying
over his embarrassing defeat to then candidate Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2016
general elections.
The defeat dashed his hope of securing a second term
in office, making him the first sitting president in Ghana’s political history to
be defeated overwhelmingly by an opposition leader.
Purposeless
Lamentation
Ever since he lost to then candidate Nana Akufo-Addo,
Mr Mahama has never stopped brooding over it.
Just last week, he took his sulking feature to
London, United Kingdom, where he told opposition National Democratic Congress
(NDC) supporters that it was the “incompetence” label put on him and his
government by then opposition New
Patriotic Party (NPP) that made him lose the election.
He appeared to say that the NDC supporters were so gullible
that they believed the “incompetence” tag pushed particularly by then vice
presidential candidate and now Vice President Alhaji Dr. Bawumi, in the heat of
the campaign.
“They kept shouting ‘incompetence,’ ‘incompetence,’ ‘incompetence’
until our own people started believing that we are incompetent,” he lamented,
adding, “Our own NDC guys think I am incompetent.”
Super
Incompetence
The former president said events in the country
since he left office had shown that the NPP administration is “super
incompetent.”
He indicated, “Now they themselves realize that
governance is not easy. They kept shouting ‘incompetence!’ ‘incompetence!’ until
our own people started believing we are incompetent and that these guys must be
some super people. Now look at the super....that’s the super for you! You just
have to add super to it to make super incompetent.”
Divine
Defeat
In one breath, Mr Mahama said it was the
incompetence tag that made him lose the election, but in another, he accepts it
was good the NDC was kicked out of office so that the whole world would know
which administration is incompetent.
In an analogy, he said, “I did history in university
and we had that question of ‘if.’ You know if Napoleon had been taller, would
it have changed the course of history? If this had happened would this have
happened?
“So you can always fantasize about if something had
happened and that’s exactly what would have happened. They would have said if
Nana had won, Free SHS would have come; if Nana had won, every district would
have a factory. If Nana had won, every village would have a dam. If Nana had
won, he would have reduced petrol prices. If Nana had won, the cedi would have
come back to one dollar. That’s what would have happened. If we had won, there
is nothing we would have done anybody would have appreciated.
“And so it is God’s way of saying ‘you guys should
step aside and let Ghanaians have a feel of this Nana guy and see the magic he
can work to fulfill the things he has said.”
Mr John Dramani Mahama is now revealing that there
are internal squabbles in the NDC, although during his tenure of office, the
same President Mahama led the NDC to orchestrate an agenda that sought to sow
seeds of discord in then opposition NPP and portray its candidate - Nana
Akufo-Addo - as a divisive leader who could not be entrusted with the destiny
of the country.
Media
Bias
In spite of the glaring hijacking of all state-owned
media in contravention of the rules, and controlling a good number of the
opposition press by the NDC government, the former president says the media were
biased against his government.
“The NPP rolled out a very strong propaganda
campaign. They just got a label of ‘corrupt’ and ‘incompetent’ on us and they
had media allies. They continued over and over again until Ghanaians said well,
let’s see these people off but our own people imbibed that propaganda.
“I said in
Somanya that the NPP did not win the election; NDC lost it.”
He commended the minority NDC in parliament for
their work.
“Even with the 106 seats that we have, our minority
is doing so well. I must commend them for the work they are doing.
Complacency
Mr Mahama said during the 2016 campaign, “Everybody
became complacent” and pointed out that the party could not reconcile with
those who were wronged.
“I take full responsibility. As the president your
focus is on development. Sometimes you lose sight of some of the little things
going on at the grass roots,” he seemed to be defending himself.
One
Million Votes
He said he lost because NDC sympathizers did not go
out in their numbers to vote on election day.
“On the day, we lost almost a million votes and that
is because our people did not come out to vote. Nana Addo’s votes did not
increase significantly. It was a hundred and something thousand more but we
dropped by more than 900,000 votes.
“I mean in every region, if you look at the results
you see that there was a consistent drop and so what it tells us is that as
many of our people who voted for us in 2012, this time did not come out to vote
in 2016.”
The former president added, “We are in opposition. We
have no expectation and so we should come together to be able to fight and come
back to government.”
No comments:
Post a Comment