Mahama Needs to Dialogue with the Supreme Court, Not Akufo-Addo

As I write, the convincingly defeated Presidential Candidate of Ghana’s main opposition political party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), former President John “Airbus” Dramani Mahama, is in the Supreme Court of Ghana (SCOG) with a curious and scandalous petition that seeks to have the 2020 Presidential Election rerun, on the patently spurious grounds that neither did the declared winner nor the loser of the country’s most recent Presidential Election cross the 50-percent-plus-1 mark stipulated by the largely National Democratic Congress-crafted, Indemnity Clause-hobbled 1992 Fourth-Republican Constitution (See “Akufo-Addo, Mahama Must Dialogue Amid 2020 Election Petition – Kwame Pianim” Modernghana.com 1/21/21).

Well, that is not what the administrators of the sole institutional establishment authorized to both conduct and call the results of all state-related and run elections conducted in the country are saying. According to Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensa, the Chairperson of Ghana’s Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), the Presidential Incumbent, that is, Nana Addo Akufo-Addo, garnered 51.59-percent of all the valid votes cast in the 2020 Presidential Election, whereas Nana Akufo-Addo’s main and most formidable opponent and challenger, Mr. John Dramani Mahama, netted 47.37-percent of the votes. Now, the man who once had the franchise literally parceled out to him by retired Justice William Atuguba and some of his associates of the SCOG panel that adjudicated the 2012 Presidential-Election Petition, is claiming, without any substantive or forensically sustainable evidence that the man who handily defeated him in the 2020 Presidential Election clinched only 49-percent of the total valid votes cast, and that the plaintiff himself received 46-percent of the counted valid votes.

Now, what is significant to note here is that in calling out the final results of the 2020 Presidential Election in favor of Nana Akufo-Addo, Mrs. Mensa, the Chief Returning Officer (CRO), noted emphatically that even if all the votes in the lone remaining constituency, that is, Techiman-South, were called out in favor of the losing candidate, that is, Mr. John Dramani Mahama, the former President would still not have enough votes to significantly draw down Nana Akufo-Addo’s 50-percent-plus win. Well, the cold reality is that the Techiman-South Constituency is the traditional stronghold of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), meaning that practically speaking, it is far more likely for Nana Akufo-Addo to have won a higher percentage of the presidential-election ballot in the aforementioned constituency than vice-versa. But Mrs. Mensa was mathematically more than generous enough to make the most highly improbable concession in favor of the loser. It is on the basis of this clearly hypothetical case scenario that the megalomaniacal plaintiff of the 2020 Presidential-Election Petition has rather sophomorically and weak-mindedly decided to make his rather farcical case demanding the thorough rerun of the 2020 Presidential Election.

As of this writing, a report had gone out in the local Ghanaian media indicating that the plaintiff of the 2020 Presidential-Election Petition was in the process of having the Chief Justice Kwasi Anin Yeboah-presided SCOG Adjudication panel dismiss the patently frivolous Mahama petition. Now, as usual, Mr. Kwame Pianim, the pesky Akufo-Addo gadfly and renowned economist and industrialist, once in the pay of the late Chairman Jerry John Rawlings-led junta of the erstwhile Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) and, subsequently, a staunch and vanguard member and key operative of the New Patriotic Party would have both the winner and the loser of the 2020 Presidential Election commit to a national reconciliation dialogue, on the rather curious grounds that the year 2021 may very well shape up to be a very difficult period in the sociopolitical and economic development and existence of the Ghanaian people, and that Ghanaians will need the cooperation of both Nana Akufo-Addo and Mr. Mahama to effectively and successfully carry the country safely and delicately along, especially in view of the fact that Ghana is presently afflicted with the rocky dilemma of a Hung Parliament.

Somebody needs to tell the former Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Cocoa-Marketing Board (GCMB), presently COCOBOD, and failed New Patriotic Party Presidential Candidate that about the only semblance of sociopolitical cooperation that President Akufo-Addo requires of the SADA-Akonfem Scam-Artist, is for Mr. Dramani Mahama to stop pretending, forthwith, as if he has proprietary entitlement to the Presidency and patriotically and responsibly play the constitutionally stipulated role of an Opposition Leader, in much the same way responsibly played by the now-President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, when the latter was Ghana’s main Opposition Leader and Mr. Mahama was President and Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF).

That the thoroughly and convincingly defeated Candidate Mahama has been quixotically and scandalously attempting to establish a parallel government since March of last year, when the COVID-19 Global Pandemic struck, is what the 80-plus-year-old Mr. Pianim ought to be addressing. At any rate, if the thinly veiled suggestion here is that a disgruntled Mr. Mahama may very well be poised to engaging in a Trumpian act of “civil” political mischief, then the “Prick-Propelled” narcissist, as one irate female critic by the only given first name of Catherine put it recently, had better be prepared to be fiercely and proportionately engaged by forces jealously concerned and protective of the sovereignty and integrity of the globally renowned and respected Democratic Republic of Ghana.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

January 21, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]