President John Mahama
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe
Reports trending on the World-Wide Web that some fanatical supporters of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) attempted to burglarize and damage the private residence of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the three-time presidential candidate of Ghana’s main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), yesterday, but for the timely intervention of the local Nima police, located just a block from the residence of the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, ought to be a strong signal to all responsible, peace-loving and forward-looking Ghanaian citizens, both at home and abroad, as well as members of the international community at large, that an increasingly desperate President John Dramani Mahama is hell-bent on overstaying his electoral mandate and may have to be forced from power, in the highly likely even of the Gonja native’s losing the December 7, 2016 presidential election (See “Police Ward Off Attack on Akufo-Addo’s Residence; Call for Reinforcement” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 11/13/16)
In recent days, the Chief Resident of the Flagstaff House, who has yet to explain the precise circumstances leading to the sudden death of his immediate predecessor and former boss, President John Evans Atta-Mills, to the nation and the international community at large, has been making erratic speeches on the stumps suggesting that his most formidable political opponent has been fervidly preparing to launch another presidential-election petition in the wake of the country’s 2016 general election.
Mr. Mahama clearly sees the proverbial handwriting of imminent and certain defeat on the walls of both his official and private residences, but is adamantly and foolhardily balking at a peaceful and civilized acceptance of the will of the Ghanaian electorate. The “Ganger Boy” had better be warned to studiously play by the clearly written rules of democratic engagement or have himself to blame.
The leader of the ruling National Democratic Congress ought to know by now that his far more politically savvy, visionary and experienced opponent and former Foreign Minister cannot be intimidated by this toothless bulldog who literally had the presidency dropped into his laps by sinister default.
President Mahama must also rest assured that he would be living in a fool’s paradise to cavalierly suppose that in the event of him rigging Election 2016, just as he did in 2012, with the criminal complicity of the extant Electoral Commissioner, that either Nana Akufo-Addo or the leaders of the New Patriotic Party would seek nonexistent redress from the Wood Supreme Court.
The NPP and its peace-loving leader and teeming supporters and sympathizers are fully prepared, this time around, to assume reins of governance if all reliable electoral indicators objectively point to Ghana’s largest and ethnic-majority party having won Election 2016.
Mr. Mahama may also save himself and his fast-thinning crowd of supporters and sympathizers and, indeed, the rest of the nation, a lot of trouble to heed the first words that were uttered by the long-serving General-Secretary of the National Democratic Congress in the wake of Election 2012.
Those words clearly and unmistakably contradicted the decision of the then-Electoral Commissioner, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the former political science lecturer of the country’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana. Well, according to Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, a deputy cabinet appointee under the erstwhile regime of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, it was the abject lack of vigilance at the polling station that culminated in the inauspicious declaration of victory for the then-Interim President Mahama by Dr. Afari-Gyan.
I have observed in these very pages time and again that it is well-past time that the key operatives of the New Patriotic Party send a strong and unmistakable signal to their main political rivals and opponents that they are fully prepared to launch a full-scale war to liberate our beloved country from this payola-addicted megalomaniacal tyrant and fast-rising dictator with an inordinate penchant for military uniforms of a kind that would make the Rwandan Civil War seem like a yuletide picnic.
Nana Akufo-Addo also ought to alert Ghana’s Parliament, the West-African Parliament, the African Parliament, the African Union and the United Nations’ Secretary-General and the UN Security Council about the latest developments in the country, and specifically name all the culprits and suspects behind these deliberately orchestrated acts of felonious and wanton criminality.