The humiliating defeat suffered by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the December 7, 2016 general election has been blamed on the appointments of numerous ‘greedy bastards’ by ex-President John Mahama.

A pro-NDC pressure group – the Action Movement of the NDC – disclosed this, accusing Mr. Mahama and his ‘greedy’ appointees of sending the party into forced opposition.

They also claimed that the president’s brothers were the main reason why the NDC lost the 2016 elections, accusing them of collecting all contracts from airport, roads, Cocobod, GNPC, ECG, VRA, Ministry of Power and all major contracts in the country.

“If you don’t see JM brothers, you cannot get a contract and if you see them, then you have to pay money before you get the contract, frustrating foreign contractors and companies by taking Ghanaian contractors for granted and creating enemies for the NDC party,” the group alleged. Addressing a press conference yesterday at the Accra International Press Centre, spokesperson of the Action Movement, Kodzo Hamenya Keglo, said Mr Mahama appointed greedy ‘bastards’ who knew nothing about their work.

There has been a free-for-all fight by some top shots of the opposition party lately regarding the shock defeat it suffered in December 2016, making John Mahama Ghana’s first one-term president.

According to Keglo, all former President Mahama did was to frustrate Ghanaians and foreign businesses in the country.

“This led to the economic hardship the country was met with and a subsequent loss of election,” he said.

While doing this, he indicated, “the then candidate for the NPP, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, was also going round telling Ghanaians what he would do for them when voted into power,” he emphasized.

Dead Goat

The group added that the NDC also lost the election due to a statement made by the former president that ‘he is a dead goat.’

According to the pro-NDC group, the party’s downfall started as soon as former President Mahama made the statement before the polls that ‘he is a dead goat,’ which meant it did not matter to him if he won the 2016 election or not. Ex-President Mahama had reportedly said in an address to the Ghanaian community in Botswana that he’s a dead goat, apparently to mean that he did not care any longer about the numerous complaints being made by Ghanaians about the severe economic crisis that faced the country during the first few years of his tenure as a president.

This, Keglo said, was disrespect to Ghanaians and an indication that Mr. Mahama did not care about the plight of Ghanaians whose mandate he needed to continuously rule the country.

Appeal

The group has therefore, called on the party’s hierarchy and delegates to appoint what it termed as non-arrogant appointees who must equally know how to address issues whenever they are engaging the media.

“Other allegations levelled against the former head of state included the former first lady, Lordina Mahama’s printing and importing party T-shirts from China into the country while his husband was busily campaigning for the purchase of made-in-Ghana goods; a huge disappointment on the party’s behalf,” he added.

He said while JM was preaching made-in-Ghana goods such as shoes, batik and locally made clothes, the wife was doing the opposite by printing T-shirts in China, which he noted, is a huge disappointment for Ghanaian printing companies. The 20 million pieces of T-shirts printed from China, Kodzo Hamenya Keglo said, could have been shared to party members to print them locally to create a lot of jobs for Ghanaians.

“When in the history of Ghana has a first lady printed campaign T-shirts and become the major source of party materials in an election? To the extent that the wife of the president printing Mayafi (scarf) with her image on it, does she have presidential ambitions, she should tell us,” he quizzed. The group claimed that the appointment of Dr Stephen Kwabena Opuni as Cocobod CEO, changing of Lt Col. Larry Gbevlo Lartey and bringing in Yaw Donkor as the security coordinator were also big mistakes made by the president.

Descending on the former Chief of Staff, Julius Debrah, Mr. Kegli alleged that he (Julius Debrah) also went around the country sharing money to Ghanaians thinking that was the path towards winning election 2016.

The group further lambasted former Communications Minister, Omane Boamah, saying instead of him to have sold ex-President Mahama to the electorate, he rather chose to be saying on TV and radio that “Nana Akufo-Addo can never become a president, when there were loads of issues for him to explain to Ghanaians.”

Meeting Ex-Appointees

Meanwhile, DAILY GUIDE has learnt that the former president may be meeting his appointees this week to strategise for the way out, following the internal opposition to his re-entry for the 2020 presidential race.

A text message is said to have been sent by a former deputy chief of staff to all the former appointees to attend the meeting at possibly Gold House area where some party supporters would be bused to chant “No Mahama No 2020” to stampede the system to pave way for his contest.

The former president also has an engagement at the University of Ghana tomorrow afternoon where he is expected to take his audience through readings from his book, “My First Coup D’Etat.”