Mahama Apologizes for Making NDC Unattractive

Dear Reader: how often have I not told you that former President John Dramani Mahama can scarcely see beyond his eyebrows and eyelashes, and that Sir Narcissus has absolutely no clue about his reason or reasons for deciding to run for a nonconsecutive presidential reelection. And this cluelessness is borne out by his recent shameless and unconscionable appeal to all branch executives of his party, to wit, the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), around the country, to make the party whose image and reputation he effectively and almost irreparably ran aground attractive to Ghanaian voters in the runup to the 2020 general election. Mr. Mahama was widely reported to have made his appeal at Nkoranza, the hometown of his wife and former First Lady, Mrs. Lordina Mahama, in the Brong-Ahafo Region (See “Let’s Rebrand and Make NDC Attractive – Mahama” Modernghana.com 10/20/18).

He clearly may not realize this, but what the former Communications Minister under the government of President Jerry John Rawlings is admitting here is that his 8-year tenure at the Presidency, three-and-half of them as Arch-Lieutenant or Vice-President to Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills, did quite a lot of irreparable damage to the attraction or appeal of the National Democratic to the Ghanaian voter. And this is precisely why the former NDC-Member of Parliament for Bole, in the Gonja-West Constituency, issued his appeal to the party’s constituency executives to facilitate the “rebranding” of the NDC. The question now, though, becomes: How do you rebrand a party that has literally and effectively laid the Ghanaian economy to waste? And a party that inherited a double-digit economic growth from the John Agyekum-Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), in January 2009, and within the short temporal space of 8 years drastically reduced the pace of the country’s economic growth and development to a diddly 3 percentage points or less?

You see, the clueless Mr. John Mahama may be too narcissistic and irredeemably myopic to appreciate the very basic fact that what Ghana needs presently is not the cosmetic and superficial marketing of a political party whose leadership has more than amply demonstrated that it woefully lacks the vision, creative imagination and a progressive development agenda for significantly upgrading the economic, technological, cultural and intellectual and professional levels of the country. You see, in the political playbook of the Russian-educated “Animal Farm” type of communications specialist – and here, of course, I have in mind Mr. George Orwell’s Squealer – the party and the interests of its leaders are superior and/or far more important than those of the nation. We all witnessed this self-serving policy agenda at play when then-President Mahama summarily abrogated the age-old Teacher- and Nurse-Trainee Allowances, while NDC Members of Parliament who also served in his cabinet were collusively and criminally allowed to draw double salaries.

In sum, in the “Animal Farm” world and political culture of the Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress, even as publicly affirmed by Mr. Alban SK Bagbin, the party’s longest-serving MP, some Ghanaian citizens were more Ghanaian than others. I also don’t know how one rebrands a party whose democratically deposed former Head of Government and the Nation has vowed to put at least 30-percent of the students currently enrolled in the Akufo-Addo-implemented fee-free Senior High School System back onto our streets and alleyways, should Mr. Mahama be voted back into the Jubilee-Flagstaff House come December 2020, because 100-percent SHS enrollment means the lurid cheapening of the exclusive privilege of the rich and powerful in Ghanaian society. We are talking about the man who scandalously siphoned millions of cedis budgeted for the development of our beloved country, including funds earmarked for the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), into his presidential reelection campaign chest.

This is the incurably corrupt Ghanaian leader that NDC National Organizer, Mr. Kofi Adams, would have Ghanaian voters believe that they have, somehow, regretted having massively jackbooted out of the Jubilee-Flagstaff House.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
October 20, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]