Don’t worry, President Mahama will be opposed and defeated next year

In mainstream American political parlance, there is a common saying that “You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide.” That was pretty much the expression that came to mind when I came across the news article captioned “NDC Clears Mahama to Run Unopposed in November Primaries” (MyJoyOnline.com 10/15/15).

Right from the get-go, ruling party General-Secretary Johnson Asiedu-Nketia had made it publicly clear that any party official or member who attempted to challenge incumbent president, John Dramani Mahama, would not be tolerated. That warning, of course, did little to deter Mr. George Boateng, the Oyarifa National Democratic Congress’ polling station youth organizer, who had picked up nomination forms to contest Mr. Mahama, whom the 45-year-old Mr. Boateng had described as an epic failure, in the party’s November 7 presidential primary.

As of this writing (Oct. 15, 2015), reports indicated that Mr. Boateng had been summarily expelled from the NDC. His nomination forms had earlier been described as fake and inauthentic by General Mosquito, the sobriquet of Mr. Asiedu-Nketia, although some party headquarters officials who had been accused of having handed over nomination forms to Mr. Boateng, including the party’s longtime accountant, had been promptly fired by the General-Secretary.

This, of course, is none the least bit surprising because the National Democratic Congress was founded by Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, Ghana’s longest-reigning military dictator and later “democratically” elected president.

Fortunately for the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian voters, who crave a change of both leadership and government, come December 2016, the country has a formidable alternative and progressive political party and leadership in the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party (NPP), which was criminally robbed at the polls in December 2012, with the bizarre complicity of the Wood-chaperoned Supreme Court of Ghana.

As of this writing, the leadership of the New Patriotic Party was in a fierce battle with the country’s newly appointed Electoral Commissioner, Mrs. Charlotte Kesson-Osei, to have the existing biometric Voters’ Register scrapped and replaced with a new one. This comes on the heels of the scandalous discovery by a team of forensic election experts, led by three-time Akufo-Addo running-mate Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia that nearly 80,000 Togolese nationals have been packed onto Ghana’s Voters’ Register.

These illegal voters had been criminally induced by NDC officials and their scouts in the Volta Region with promises of motorbikes and free access to Ghana’s healthcare system. Indeed, in handing down its decision in the 2012 Presidential-Election Petition, the Atuguba-presided panel of Supreme Court judges noted that the electoral roll of the country was beset by a legion of unacceptable irregularities which needed to be promptly rectified, if the 2016 general election were to be certified as free and fair.

In the wake of Election 2012, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia, the NDC’s General-Secretary, publicly admitted that, in fact, it was Nana Akufo-Addo who had won the presidency, but that it was the abject lack of vigilance and sheer complacency that had caused the New Patriotic Party to be declared the loser by Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the recently retired Electoral Commissioner and former political science lecturer at the country’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana.