No Word From Mahama Yet

Knowing his penchant for tweeting in the mould of President Donald Trump, we cannot fathom why former President John Mahama has still not responded to the charge that he begged the Yankees to put up a military base in Ghana.

It is a monstrous charge which he should have responded to by now. He has already done so for the allegation that he sought to rig the polls in Sierra Leone. Anyway at the time of composing this commentary, the President has conceded defeat to the opposition in the runoff.

By the end of today, failing to read from him, we can comfortably conclude that indeed he lied to Ghanaians by supporting the demonstration against the so-called deal by the President Akufo-Addo administration and the Yankees. Without referring to his efforts to have the base established here, he has demonstrated that he cannot be trusted in matters of sincerity.

As we pointed out earlier, being a former president does not necessarily make one a statesman. It is deeds and high moral values which really make former presidents statesmen.

A former president who withholds his comments which can go a long way to clear the air on nagging political issues in a polarized country such as ours, only gives room for people to regard him as a hypocrite. We are constrained to describe our former president as such because having held that position and craving to do so again, he should be above board avoiding lies at all cost.

When such moral blemishes of mendacity and self-seeking – all belong to a former president – we can only deny him, justifiably so, the enviable description of a statesman.

We would have loved not to do so but under the circumstances, we have no option but to do so.

Interestingly, the dust is beginning to settle as various strands of evidence emerge about what really happened. Today, technology has made it possible for the storage and retrieval of archival materials with so much ease.

Perhaps this has informed former President John Mahama's muteness over the military base deal; apprehensive about the evidence against him.

Silence, we are told, means consent. It therefore behooves former President John Mahama to respond to the image denting charges being leveled against him – all backed by textual evidence. He can choose to be silent as he has done and leave us to arrive at our conclusion.

The situation is not good for his political project which we have seen he is intent on prosecuting: come what may. We wonder whether he is receiving veracious feedback from the ground.

Those who are close to him must be bold to tell him that the military base subject has visited such a blow on his image that abandoning further political mischief would be in his best interest. Earlier, we had pointed at how he turned his back on the coup talk of his party's deputy general secretary and rather threw his weight behind the demonstration against the US deal. Hypocrisy of the highest order!