Opinions of Saturday, 27 August 2016

Columnist: Daily Guide

Mahama’s Montie mode

President John Dramani Mahama President John Dramani Mahama

Our President has assumed a Montie mode in the past few weeks: his campaign remarks couched in a language incommensurate with his status.

It is therefore ironic and laughable that in his infamous remission of the jail sentence of the Montie 3, he called on his compatriots to be mindful about their language by avoiding intemperateness.

We can only infer hypocrisy when the president turns round to insult those he does not agree with, a high level of verbal toxin after such touch of seeming decency.

A number of remarks have originated from him as he runs around the country to woo Ghanaians to his political cause.

While some persons say they are not amazed by the President’s uncouthness, others claim he is being driven by an unusual gush of adrenaline as the outcome of the forthcoming polls becomes more and more unpredictable for him.

Others think that the veneer he pulled over his real life earlier has given way, exposing him big time.

Saying one thing and practicing the contrary does not portray a personality as one worthy of deference more so when the person in question is a President ruling over millions of Ghanaians.

President John Mahama now makes scathing headlines with his remarks, the one at Bimbilla being the latest.

He is reported to have told the residents of this Nanumba town not to vote for Nana Akufo Addo because in his estimation the man is a dictator and therefore unfit to rule this country. What a way to seek votes from a people.

Wouldn’t dangling his table of achievements to Ghanaians, if there are, be better than embarking on an innuendo-hurling trip?

When he was in the Western Region earlier, he told his hosts that those who do not acknowledge the presence of good roads in this part of the country must be sleeping: the enhanced infrastructure too glaring as not to be seen.

Interestingly the chief of Dixcove had complained about the bad state of roads in the region during the recent Kudom festival.

By President Mahama’s inference, he and other chiefs, alongside Nana Akufo Addo, are oblivious of the enhanced road network in the region because they are in a slumber mode.

A classic obscene utterance from a man who sometimes forgets he should not conduct himself like one of the serial callers or Montie guys in his employment.

A President who would respond to concerns raised by citizens through smelly innuendos is calling for himself equally scathing remarks.

He fired another smelly salvo in the Western Region when he told his hosts that the progenitors of the NPP machinated the ouster of Kwame Nkrumah.

What stops the people of the Upper West Region from telling him that the forebear of the NDC, the PNDC was responsible for the overthrow of the late President Hilla Limann and so they should turn their backs on the NDC?

Is that how we should run our campaigns? Certainly not, especially with the President dictating the pace of such inappropriate campaign conduct empirical evidence available to support the assertion.

This acerbic language is symptomatic of desperation.

Shouldn’t we sympathise with the President sometimes in his useless bid to alter his political fortunes?