I am praying Mahama tells 'fewer lies' in 2022 - NDC executive

Executive member of the Tema East branch of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Stephen Ashitey Adjei, has offered well wishes for the new year to former President John Mahama.

In a write-up, Mr. Ashitey Adjei, who is popularly called Moshake, tells Mr. Mahama that he has him in his thoughts and prayers, and that in the coming year his most fervent desire is to see the former President tell fewer lies.

“As a former leader of my party, the great NDC, I am not happy that you are not generally reliable with what you say. This is why my most fervent wish for you this year is that, we see less and less of the lies from you,” Moshake wrote.

Moshake is the plain-talking NDC Executive who has since 2016, accused former President John Mahama of using his presidency to make NDC unpopular and thus catapulting the party from government into opposition.

In his new year write-up, he laments that the former President continues to drag the NDC down with him by a lack of genuine sincerity in his public communication.

“For instance, everyone knows that the ‘’thank you tour” that you recently embarked on was just an ostensible ploy to actually start your campaign for 2024 flagbearership. How do I know?

"Because it is on this same tour that you declared your “do or die” comment. How could you be declaring do or die for the next election if you have no plan of contesting? And yet you told the party you were going on a thank you tour,” Moshake wrote.

According to him, “it is lies and monkey tricks like this makes it difficult for the NDC to band together at the top.”

Moshake points out that the trick Mr. Mahama pulled with the thank you tour only reminds him of the Mahama bag of tricks. “What you did on the tour is no different from what you did in 2016. You and your family declared to the whole world that you had quit politics, only to turn round and contest for the 2020 presidential ticket of the NDC.”

According to him, “Mr. Mahama even tricked NDC stalwarts including Dr. Ekwow Spio Gabrah, Prof. Joshua Alabi and others into thinking that he would make them running mates in 2020, only to swerve them for Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang.”

The firebrand NDC Executive added that, “Mr. Mahama continued with his dodgy tactics even after losing the 2020 elections, claiming that he had won and yet when he went to court, he could not provide any evidence to back the claim.”

Moshake pointed out that all of these shady things do not help the image of the NDC, arguing that even though Mr. Mahama is no longer the leader of the NDC, his lack of straightforward honesty rubs badly on the NDC because he is the immediate past leader of the NDC.

“This is why in 2022, the best I can wish for John Mahama, for the sake of the NDC, is a more straightforward lifestyle. No more using supposed health walks as means to start campaigns through the backdoor, like Mahama did in Tamale; no more announcing retirement from politics only to return, and no more claiming victory and misleading the party’s youth on the streets to demonstrate only to fail miserably to produce one shred of evidence in court.

“I have always said that our imperfect human nature frequently impels us to do and say things at the wrong time, but lying on the part of former president Mahama is going beyond reasonable definition of what is appropriate, Mr. Mahama should withdraw from the 2024 flagbearership race and submit himself to character transformation in this new year,“ Moshake wrote.