Mahama's Victory Is Definitely Not For Me!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

He did not conduct himself professionally during last year's general election, and so it is not clear just what he means when President John Dramani Mahama calls on the members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to celebrate their purported electoral success (See "My Victory is for all Ghanaians - President Mahama" Ghana News Agency/Ghanaweb.com 12/11/12). He did not conduct himself professionally because contrary to election rules, Mr. Mahama went on the air less than twelve hours before the polling stations opened for business to campaign for his party and himself. He mischievously capitalized on his presidential incumbency under the guise of having a solemn moment with the nation in order to advice against electoral violence.

Then also, informed that people whose particulars could not be picked, or identified, by the biometric voting machines were duly not being allowed to vote, Mr. Mahama imperiously decided to play Electoral Commissioner by asking that such people be permitted to flout the pre-established rules of the game, as it were.

Then also, it is absolutely nothing short of the extremely peevish to hear Mr. Mahama farcically attempt to play the consummate statesman, after having used his Gonja ethnicity and northern nativity to both divide the country and prejudice northerners against his southern-born political opponents in the lead-up to Election 2012. Dear reader, take this reading: "The issues go beyond ethnic, religious and geographical location, and the election should be used as the turning point to tackle all those issues, rather than dwelling on petty issues that will not help in the growth of the country."

Rather farcical, indeed, because during his electioneering campaign, the Bole-Bamboi native had fervidly entreated eligible voters of the three northern regions not to cast a single vote for his main political opponent, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, until the latter instantly reversed positions on the New Patriotic Party (NPP) ticket by making Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia the substantive presidential candidate and Nana Akufo-Addo the running-mate of the former deputy-governor of the Bank of Ghana. And unless the right thing is done by the Supreme Court to promptly overturn the patent presidential fraud that is Mr. Mahama, it is dead-certain that corruption is going to run riotously rampant, even as ethnocentrism has been eerily noted to have assumed unprecedented levels in the wake of the swearing in of the former Rawlings communication minister and the veritable architect of what came to be "euphemistically" dubbed as "Shit-Bombing," a politically crude practice in which media organizations that decided to proverbially hold the feet of the key operatives of the corrupt Rawlings government to the fire had their premises literally inundated with human excreta.

It is also ironic, albeit quite predictable, to learn that at a mammoth celebration wholly devoted to the membership of the so-called National Democratic Congress, during which not a single opposition leader had been invited, Mr. Mahama would cynically call upon all Ghanaians, irrespective of party and/or ideological affiliation, to heartily celebrate with him. On the latter count, dear reader, take a reading: "The election has just ended and the victory is not for John Mahama and the NDC government, but for all the people of Ghana, since we need all hands on deck to be able to govern the country peacefully and smoothly."

Actually, the unmistakable intent of the preceding observation was to taunt the other moiety - or full-half - of Ghanaian voters whose candidate had had victory callously and unconscionably snatched from him by the Afari-Gyan-chaperoned Electoral Commission. For, the celebration which was lavishly staged at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle had been deliberately and tendentiously dubbed as the NDC's "Victory Dance." Some victory dance, indeed!

Anyway, what got my proverbial horse was when Mr. Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah, Mr. Mahama's campaign manager, in brazen defiance of all available evidence to the contrary, smugly asserted that his party's "success was chalked through hard work." Of course, in the vocabulary arsenal of the NDC, naked "fraud" is the semantic equivalent of "hard work."