The 2020 Elections: Clear Choice Between Mahama’s Status Quo And Progressive Ghana

At the time of putting this piece together at home on Saturday, February 23, 2019, in the cold winter evening somewhere in U.S., several Ghanaian media reports monitored online had it that former President John Dramani Mahama was sprinting to victory regarding his NDC-hijacked party’s presidential primaries held throughout the country. Except those Ghanaians who do not want to know or are so gullibly entrapped by Mr. Mahama and his cheerers’ politics of “good old days” and their campaign of Ghana-is-about-to-implode under Nana Akufo-Addo, the rest of us knew all along that Mr. Mahama would be the choice for the NDC’s flag-bearer for 2020 general elections.

JDM’s election, or simply call it “enskinment, enstoolment, enthronement” or coronation as NDC’s presidential candidate for the next year general polls was highly predicted and a foregone conclusion. Indeed, it was a mere political ritual misleadingly wrapped up in fancy “Father Christmas colors” to make it more appealing and silence any potential, timid dissident within the party ranks who might want to make some faint noises against Mr. Mahama’s crowning.

So far it appears the NDC current kingmakers who did the behind-the-scene manipulations have done a “great job” in their re-packaging of the heavy baggage weighing down ex-president Mahama, because many reliable media sources reported that hardly had all the preliminary primary election results have come in and almost all the losing contestants started conceding and congratulating the party’s brand-new-secondhand presidential contender.

Now, the political battle is about to be set into the full gear as the country’s main opposition party had predictably picked its favorite presidential challenger. Interestingly, former president Mahama has gotten exactly what he desperately wants for the past two years: Thus, barring any unforeseen development, he will have the chance to contest the incumbent Nana Akufo-Addo one more time for the nation’s presidency in December 2020.

Now, let’s not waste any more time by holding back but state plainly and boldly that the difference or the choice, especially, between President Akufo-Addo and Mr. John Mahama in the upcoming 2020 presidential election couldn’t have been clearer. It is a straightforward, clear choice smart-thinking Ghanaians will definitely make in 2020 elections between the relics of the past and the progressive future of Ghana. Obviously the current President, Nana Addo represents the forward movement of Ghana, whereas ex-president Mahama stands for the past that the politically-savvy Ghanaian voters heavily rejected in December 2016.

Truly, the economy under Mr. Mahama’s government was in shambles. All the rudiments of—both macro and micro—economic pointers were running amok. Speaking recently about ex-president Mahama’s poor performance in office, here is the former Rector of GIMPA Prof. Stephen Adei: “There was so much corruption, there was so much inflation, there was so much debt, the growth has tumbled to less than four percent and every indicator was down…hope was totally shuttered and by the time His Excellency President John Mahama was leaving office we were back almost into the ditch or into the doldrums" (classfmonline/Class FM).

Remember all the above factors or socioeconomic variables that conspired to spell the electoral doom for Mr. Mahama are still sitting intact in his political baggage. But the “newly-minted” NDC presidential hopeful is operating under the pretext that by putting up innocent-looking face and screaming loud at President Akufo-Addo for supposedly turning Ghana into mini or full-blown, war-torn Syria, the good people of this country will forget about the messy mess Mr. Mahama created before leaving office.

To be fair, everything may not be all that rosy in Ghana yet given the deep hole the NDC government led by JDM left behind. Nonetheless, every fair-minded Ghanaian will be quick to admit that compared to former president Mahama’s clueless leadership and lack of decisiveness, the present administration under Nana Akufo-Addo is way ahead of his predecessor in every governmental management category, such as sound socioeconomic programs and effective governance.

Surely, from now on up to December 2020 elections time, Ghana’s airwaves or media terrain will be flooded by the NDC’s surging sea of the politics of doom and gloom the like of which none of us has ever seen before in the country’s body politic. This is because somehow Mr. Mahama and his campaign team strongly believe that the winning strategy for the 2020 presidential contest is by scaring the heck out of peaceful people of Ghana.

Honestly, ex-president Mahama has no fresh ideas or any creative solution toward the nation’s hydra-headed problems except his tried and failed leadership at the presidency that resulted in his miserable defeat at the hands of the “Kyebi Tough Guy” in December 2016. It is clear that anxiously burning inside the former president is the naïve notion of an election “rematch” between him and President Akufo-Addo, even though that contest’s outcome will be a replication of 2016 general election.

It bears repeating that the choice is crystal clear between Nana Akufo-Addo and John Mahama. While the current president of the republic is on the side of pushing Ghana to the next level up there, ex-president Mahama is more in favor of the past status quo, based on his campaign speeches since orbiting around opposition for the past two years.

As a teacher of contemporary political science, I am yet to make sense of an incumbent head of state like then president Mahama with almost all of the levers of governmental powers at his beck and call, but lost with that massive electoral margin to a challenger, and still thinks he can come back and overcome that huge margin of victory within four years’ time is similar to insisting that maternity ward is a resting place for sick virgins. In fact, one wonders if today’s NDC has good political strategy, because if the party’s present leadership really believes in winning in 2020, the defeated ex-president would not have been chosen again. The ruling NPP’s campaign job has been greatly cut for them with the selection of incompetent former president as NDC’s flag-bearer. Let his dossier of past corruption practices roll now. It is a fair game in politics everywhere in the world, U.S. included.

Bernard Asubonteng is US-based sociopolitical writer.