The Bawumia brand in the gutters!

By Hon. Adu Asare, Former MP of Adenta

The much heralded Bawumia Lecture was held last Thursday at the National Theatre amid cheers and hisses from an organised partisan NPP crowd. This programme seems to have been plotted to offer some reprieve and respite to the Nana Akufu-Addo campaign that is yet to show some vibrancy.

After visiting a number of regions since the NDC launched its campaign, Nana Addo's has seen the enormity of the gap between him and the NDC candidate for the December elections, President Mahama. In what appears to be an impairment of his judgment, (remember that he has said he will win the 1972 elections) his campaign has been fraught with vain and vile promises, coupled with uninspiring rhetoric on matters relating to the John Mahama administration and the wanton casting of aspersions against the sitting president and the NDC.

However hard his vituperative effusions have sought to denigrate the flag bearer of the NDC, Nana Addo is yet to create any semblance of a personality that is ready to assume power come January 2017 (and not January, 1973, as he desires!).

The stamina and energy that often occasioned and resonated with previous Nana Addo campaigns (2008/2012) are completely missing. Obviously, old age is gradually reducing the semblance of a sparkle that he exuded in the past.

It is glaringly against this backdrop that Dr Bawumia as running mate of Nana Addo in the last three election, sees this 'last' opportunity to become a Vice President of Ghana as one that he cannot gloss over. Dr Bawumia in the last one and a half years, adopted a different strategies to court attention using his so called lecture series to invoke his warped dexterity on matters relating to the Economy, with the aim of placing government in negative light to the Ghanaian electorate.

Some sections of the Ghanaian media have been strung along that agenda to place him among the connoisseurs of Economic matters in Ghana, but pretty soon, Dr Bawumia has rather disappointed many of such fans with his monotonous subjects of analysis, which with all intents and purposes is totally derailed from known standards of analyzing issues relating to best practices in economics.

The lecture that was held last week was described by the Chairman of the occasion, President Kuffuor as "very entertaining.” Woww! Of all the adjectives that could have been used to describe a lecture addressed by Dr Bawumia, it was the word "entertaining" that won the day, Eiish!

Of course it was entertaining, in the sense that it lacked any seriousness of purpose. The whole exercise smacked of an assembly of cheer-leaders organised to excite themselves after a period of a drab campaigns.

Dr Bawumia's script was a rehash of three previous lectures that he held at various university campuses and once at the Physicians and Surgeons Conference Center. Any researcher will be quick to dismiss the entire exercise for the format used, because the envisaged information which most people were expecting was absent.

It was the recycling of the same old issues, even though current information from the various established institutions across the globe suggest that the Ghanaian Economy is heading for sound recovery.

Isn't it strange that days after Dr Bawumia's lecture, the likes of seasoned Enonomists ,Dr. Akoto-Osei and Prof. Gyan Baffuor , have not been heard anywhere as it was in the past? One can only hear my good friend, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, struggling excruciatingly to do the bidding of Dr Bawumia on issues raised in the lecture.

Even in the face of acceptable standards of calculating figures in matters of economics, my good friend Kojo was "boisterously" and "buoyantly" slaughtering principles with careless abandon, forgetting that in life, one’s reputation can slump into the abyss by just one act of "feasting at the wrong bazaar."

Kojo sounded pathetic on both the Super Morning Show and on Newsfile, owing to the fact that he and Dr Bawumia were calculating figures based on their own principles and theories, yet, they sought to compare Ghana' economy with Côte d'Ivoire who also use standards of calculating figures like we do in Ghana.

In view of this show of desperation for power by Dr Bawumia, which is pushing him so hard to relinquish all accepted norms of economic practice to deliver lectures that seek to paint a gloomy picture, even in the face of contrary indeces, I can only repeat my earlier position of uncertainty for Dr Bawumia’s professional future in the event of a third failed attempt to become Vice President.

Can he be trusted by his future prospective employers? This man spews LIES and DISHONESTY at the earliest convenience. One moment he is churning out falsehood on Ghana's debt portfolio, the next moment he claims he possesses a list of names of foreigners than can be found in the Ghanaian Voter's Register, the next moment he is lying about how two EC staff ended up rendering their statutory duties in his house up North, instead of the State accredited polling center.

Dr Bawumia's penchant for the exercise of indiscretion beats my imagination. Again, one moment he is flouting the ethics of banking by disclosing details of banking transactions between entities, and in another moment he is sharing false Insider information purportedly from the African Development Bank, which the latter came out to debunk in a press release.

How on earth does Dr Bawumia expect any bank worth its sort to employ such an "okro mouth" or better still a "parrot" who is ready to slaughter any information, whether classified or not, on the altar of partisan politics in furtherance of his Vice Presidential ambitions.

Dr. Bawumia this time around will not be allowed to run away from debates on his so called lecture. The likes of Hon. Seth Terkper, Hon. Ato Forson, Hon Fiifi Kwettey, Hon. Haruna Iddrisu and others are poised to debate him on any platform of his choice anywhere on this planet. He has succeeded in dodging all attempts by media houses for such an occasion.

Unfortunately for him this time, his charges are unable to explain or better still articulate his misinformation, and he may have to come out if he is a real man to own up and defend his words. His credibility has been called into question in the wake of Think Tanks like Imani Ghana vehemently shredding his theories into dust.

To conclude, my personal admonishment to Dr Bawumia is that, there's a lot at stake for him with or without politics. He must be cognizant of that fact. His desire to become Vice President should not crowd his judgment to the extent of dispensing with all other cumulative virtues that make him Dr Mahamud Bawumia.

My candid opinion is that Dr Bawumia deserves a much better role than he is being used for in the NPP. The tattered brand of his flag bearer is weighing negatively on him and has in the past few years unleashed some denting reputation to him whether consciously or unconsciously, and Dr Bawumia must purge himself of that status going forward.

Whatever he sought to earn from these dishonesty-laced lectures, is rather earning him "negative accolades" which will end up hurting his carrier beyond politics.