It is said that when groomers sleep with dogs, they catch fleas, and that’s exactly the situation with John Mahama and his comeback bid.
For all the crazed drama of the Mahama presidency, he will be remembered by generations to come as little more than a surreal footnote in Ghanaian politics. Indeed, he’ll go down as a leader, outclassed by challenges and weighed down by scandals.
Truly, Mr Mahama was humiliated out of office in 2016 over incompetence, corruption and political indecisions.
Now barely two years before the 2024 general elections, Mahama is out there declaring himself a fighter not a quitter. He is making promises that he cannot keep in the hope that Ghanaians will vote him back to the presidency.
Conceivably, he is not worried one way or the other. It would appear that for this empty integument of a man, broken promises don’t bother Mr Mahama, survival is what matters – and it’s impossible to see how he can survive if even attempts to row back on his many, contradictory promises.
Mr Mahama is lusting after the job but he is refusing to confront the truth that lusting on the job is entirely different to doing it.
Additionally, his NDC supporters believe he stands a chance of winning the next election for them. They point out that despite having been ousted from office as a serving President, he still has something to offer.
What they have forgotten is that it is utterly irresponsible to allow ourselves to be talked into buying a weight loss diet from a pudgy pig that is struggling with obesity, and hasn’t yet lost a pound.
Yes, a comeback by the former president is fraught with potential dangers for this country.
As a matter of fact, Mahama floundered desperately as president and was an embarrassment on the job.
We cannot forget how Mahama plunged the economy into a period of stagflation and a recession dealing a double blow to the country, with both consumer price and retail price indexes peaking close to 17.7 per cent in the last quarter of 2016. That was the chilling situation we were faced with under the Mahama administration.
We haven’t forgotten about how the Mahama government willfully misapplied $175 million loan facility secured in 2012 which was to provide seven district hospitals.
We also can’t forget about the over GH200 million SADA funds invested in trees burnt down while guinea fowls mysteriously flew to nearby Burkina Faso without a trace.
In actual fact, the over GH200 million GYEDA scandal is still fresh in our minds. We also cannot forget the 4 years of the Dumsor economy that led to the collapse of businesses and industries.
Again, we cannot forget the excessive corruption and gluttony that characterised the Mahama presidency.
We know Mahama and what he is made of. We know what he did with the economy between 2012 – 2016.
Yet, today, the NDC town criers are in their element with the narrative designed to advance Mahama’s ambition while concealing the uglier side of his nature.
The truth here is that Mr Mahama is not the solution to Ghana’s woes – he is the prime cause of them. When he left office in 2016, he was very unpopular. His administration was marked by incompetence, misappropriation and massive corruption. He had been found as an enabler of corruption, earning the distinction of being the first serving President to be removed from office for corruption after serving just one term. He is the worst possible President Ghana could have at this juncture.
In this time of worldwide economic crisis, Ghana needs a mature President, who is capable of deliberation, the political and emotional skills to bring a country together and the humility and pragmatism to lead.
John Mahama has none of these attributes.
The point is, the hard rupture with the politics of NDC and the danger of reducing politics to a prank on the Ghanaian public hangs like a zombie over everything.
The zombie cannot be killed, but it cannot fully live, which is why Mahama’s braggadocio will soon come back to haunt him in 2024.
Ernest Kofi Owusu-Bempah Bonsu (Deputy Director of Communications, NPP)