John Mahama went to the office, one day, as vice president and returned home as the president, following unexplained demise of Atta-Mills behind his desk at the presidency. Mahama therefore had not prepared himself for the task of office of president, which comes with all difficulties. He therefore had no choice but to put in the front-line, those juvenile-delinquents bigots with offensive verbal flatulence, whose only claim to fame was heap insults on any decent member of the Ghanaian society that dare expressed divergent views.

Cracks at the presidency

The seat of government was then sharply stratified on the lines of Atta-Mills and John Mahama loyalists, where assigns of the former, were treated as complete aliens in retaliation for suffering assigns of the latter were subjected under the tenure of the former. Some loyalists of Atta-Mills were actually sacked from their positions and made to go with empty hands, with others being made completely redundant on the job.

The presidency was completely drained of Fantes who had been offered opportunities by Atta-Mills, and in their places, were firmly transfixed people of northern extraction; and I have evidence of this because I had some of these ostracized Fantes actually complaining to me and I do not believe even ex-president John Mahama will deny this. As a matter of fact, I know a Fante loyalist of Atta-Mills, who was board chairman of one of our parastatals but was unjustifiably dismissed, and his position filled with a northerner. And this man was so bitter that he actively worked to ensure the mandate of John Mahama was never renewed because he saw him [Mahama] as a tribal bigot.

Sympathy votes

For the time John Mahama served the remaining period of Atta-Mills’ presidency, he enjoyed the goodwill of Ghanaians, mainly due to sympathy arising from Atta-Mills’ demise. Those were the days himself and his followers would always tout the calm nature of Atta-Mills, and promise to continue what he had started. Effigy of the man then became ndc emblem and it was boldly displayed on all apparels of ndc operatives when they made appearances on every tv/radio programme, as well as public functions.

They continued to bask in the glory of Atta-Mills’ demise and the day of the man’s demise was actually turned into a national day of mourning where gallons of unadulterated crocodile tears was shed, with sole intention of playing on the key-board of people’s emotions for selfish political gains. In the end, many promises were made but inability to achieve them was cleverly buried under heap of sympathy arising of Atta-Mills’ demise.

So after becoming a president without a contest but because his boss died, a contest stared him in the face when the time came for their party’s flagbearership race. And because he was scared, he put a mechanism in place, obviously by the power of money, to ensure anybody who attempted to contest him was branded “mentally-deranged”.in the end, he had his way; but even a contest which he was the only contestant, over 63,000 hardcore members of his own party [ndc] voted against him. That development should have given him and their party hierarchy a great deal of worry and urgent self-introspection.

But as the popular saying goes “those that the gods want to destroy, they first made mad”. They therefore wrapped themselves up in thick blankets of self-denial and obdurate belligerence, and carried as if nothing was happening. Such deep internal cracks were foolishly covered-up with the constant propagandists shouts of “John Mahama is a unifier under whom there is peace and tranquility in our party”.

Nana Addo was then blamed for even the day-to-day running of NPP, when the man had absolutely nothing to do with same. Indeed, a man who contested NPP flagbearship race with six others, and finally came out with a victory margin of nearly 95%, was demonically portrayed as divisive by ndc propagandists.
So whiles members and sympathizers of NPP were busily marketing Nana Addo for the election-2016,assigns of ndc were foolishly expending all time and energies, demonizing him at the expense of selling their candidate John Mahama.

Role of social media

On social media, for example, while NPP had well-organized and clinically coordinated platforms of dedicated and knowledgeable volunteers of projecting ideals of Nana Addo and NPP, ndc, on the other-hand, relied on rudiments of uneducated FOOLS whose core mandate was to insult the person of Nana Addo. And what made me felt so sure ndc was going to lose the election was this: when an NPP social media activist has come up with a cogent post, laden with heavy dose of intellectual analysis on social media promoting the party and its candidate, an ndc FOOL-soldier will just come and write “NANA ADDO WILL NEVER BE PRESIDENT”.
I was therefore not surprised when on the 17th December,2016 edition of ‘alhaji-alhaji’ on Radio Gold,Kwesi Pratt, who himself was at the fore-front of ndc propaganda machine, turned round to accuse followers of the party for “sitting aloof for NPP activists to dominate the social media space for four solid years, without knowing what to do to counter”.

After serving a first-term of office, the good people of this country were then in the best of position to properly assess John Mahama, without the benefits of sympathy from Atta-Mills’ demise. His appointees came under scrutiny, and socioeconomic well-being of the masses was put on the scale.in the end, Ghanaians passed a clear decisive verdict of rejecting 8years of massive corruption, obscene arrogance and notorious incompetence.
Disastrous Veep
Further deepening the woes of John Mahama was his uncharismatic vice Amissah-Arthur, was clearly lacks the skill in public speaking but because he wanted to appear ‘HIPPY’, he went on reckless tangent of always spewing garbage on campaign platforms.as economist, we expected him to have engaged Dr. Mamudu Bawumia, the Vice President-elect, in serious debates on how Ghana’s economy has been managed/mismanaged over the past 8years.
A series of public lectures held by Dr. Bawumia, during which facts/figures pointing to apocalyptic state of our economy were put out in the public domain, never attracted attention of Amissah-Arthur. Rather shamelessly, he was on campaign platforms claiming a friend of his had advised him not to respond to pertinent economic questions raised by Dr. Bawumia. Without a question, the man was a complete disaster.



The comedians

To further deepen
the woes of ndc electoral fortunes in the just-ended 7th December, 2016 general elections, were:
1. The taking over of the media space, in days before the elections. The party spent huge sums of cash on airtime only to send party propagandist into radio stations to paint a picture of Ghana being transformed into PARADISE, and that, those complaining of hardship had no justification whatsoever to do so. And I remember coming up with a write-up in which I made it clear that, that communication strategy was going to backfire because it was extremely insensitive to the plight of Ghanaians.

2. The importation of a legion of Nigerian comedians who were paid millions of dollars, to throw rocks into the eyes of Ghanaians. For example, the REFURBISHED Ridge Hospital [because nothing over there was built from scratch], was undertaken with taxes of ordinary Ghanaians. So, paying a Nigerian comedian, huge sums of cash to come and tell us that project was a 10-star hotel, and not a hospital, indeed, was REPUGNANT, FOOLISH, INSANE and CRUDE.

Smoothness level

Effectively, John Mahama was in office for close to 6yeaars where his performance was scrutinized; faced a contest where he had a real contestant without the help of sympathy votes, and his was cut to his real size.
But after such an unprecedented level of defeat, the ndc hierarchies who have accumulated billions of dollars in cash and physical properties, have smartly hidden their incompetence behind a so-called post-election disturbances, with expressed-purpose of diverting boiling anger of their party FOOLED-SOLDIERS [soldiers of the party who have been used and dumped].
I was so amused when Kofi Portuphy, chairman of ndc, held a press-conference to warn that “after 7th January, 2017, any attack on any ndc member will be commensurately responded to”. But the point is; ndc is still in power so why are they not dealing with present danger in society, but rather blaming it on a president-elect who has no power to issue orders to our security agencies?

My advice to ndc leadership

Finally, my humble word of advice to ndc top hierarchy is; they should be bold and tell their party followers the truth about woeful incompetence in putting in place an effective campaign strategy, and also, pocketing huge sums of campaign cash, with the thinking that the 2016 general elections was, once again, their party was going to be successful with the usual rigging plot.

And like I have stated somewhere, following the meteoric performance of NPP and unprecedented annihilation of ndc in the 2016 elections, managers of the party [ndc] should be forward-looking because, within the first year of Nana Addo presidency, an effective database of all Ghanaians will be put in-place, and credible national ID system actualized. This will then provide the platform for a credible voter register to be compiled which is the bedrock of free, fair and transparent elections.

Nana Addo then, with the team of competent ministers, will implement the key campaign promises, which will obviously present other political parties with a huge mountain to surmount at the polls in election-2020 and beyond. So ndc, particularly, should better reorganize and cut-out the needless opposition cacophony.

Justice Abeeku Newton-Offei
Email: justnoff@yahoo.com