Former President John Dramani Mahama has charged President Akufo-Addo and the ruling New Patriotic Party to desist playing with Ghanaians and acting as though they are unobservant and unwise and focus on fixing the country as they pledged prior to their victory in the 2016 polls.
Speaking at the NDC Unity Walk in Cape Coast, Mr. Mahama described as unfortunate efforts by government to assume their propaganda tactics are enough to divert the attention of the discerning Ghanaian from the challenges and difficulties the country is facing despite their numerous promises to transform the economy and make life easy for them.
“You can’t do propaganda to deceive people because we are living the life so you can’t come and tell me that my life is better when I can see that my life is getting worse so there is a limit to the propaganda you can do”.
According to him, despite the fact that blaming a previous government for the state of the country after assuming power is quite typical, the ruling government is overshooting the mark.
“I know that normally when government changes, it is normal for the new government to blame the old government for everything that went wrong, it is normal, so when you hear that NDC has done this, NDC has done that, it is the normal things of doing things but when the propaganda goes too far, then we have to tell them, Hold Your Break!, he said.
He sarcastically made comments to suggest that the NPP is having a taste of their own medicine after they continuously criticized him for ‘joking with the country’ and ‘doing absolutely nothing’ and yet are being faced with the same situation and are producing the same results.
“When we were campaigning, I said that when there’s a football match and someone sitting at the side assumes that he can play better than the captain, when they are called on to play, that’s when they’ll realise their smoothness level. When NDC was in government, those in opposition thought that leading a country was something easy and so you heard them make statements like [we will reduce petrol when we come into power, we’ll reduce electricity bills, condemned the NDC arguing that the state was so bad that even electricity bills were higher than rent] today, between the two, which is higher? Light bills!”
Mr. Mahama also touched on issues regarding the party’s flagbearership and names that have emerged as possible contestants in the race for the presidency in the 2020 elections.
“I know there are several of my colleagues who have declared an intention to run. They are all party members and they are eligible to stand.
“Let me caution: after the flag bearer contest, whoever wins, all of us will have to rally round to support that person.
And, so, please let us not go personal, let us not insult each other because all of us belong to the same NDC family, and, so, if anybody has declared to stand it is his right to do so.
Don’t insult him because, at the end of the process, all of us need to come together to support whoever wins as the flagbearer.
“I have no problem with any of my colleagues. Spio was my minister, I worked as his deputy minister and then he became my colleague …and then when I was in government he worked as my minister of state, I can’t have any problem with Spio.
I can’t have any problem with Joshua. Joshua was my colleague, we went to parliament the same year and we were in parliament together.
“When he became Vice-Chancellor of UPSA, he invited me for so many programmes in UPSA, so today I can’t have a problem with Joshua. Sylvester was in parliament with me; we were colleagues in parliament, he worked at our NHIS CEO. After that, he came as a presidential staffer at the Flagstaff House. I hope nobody takes offence that I didn’t mention some other people, Atubiga is my favourite presidential candidate.”
Sunday’s walk began from the Robert Mensah Stadium at Siwdo in Cape Coast with party bigwigs including former ministers and government appointees actively participating in it. They walked through some principal streets of Cape Coast; the Starlet 91 road to Kotokuraba through to Tantri, Brofoyedur and Ntsin, ending at London Bridge where some party stalwarts addressed the gathering.
