‘I will not knowingly drink from a poisoned calabash’
‘Boshieba’ John Dramani Mahama is at it again. After gaining 98.9 percent backing from delegate voters in the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to lead the party Jerry John Rawlings founded with his blood into the 2024 presidential election, the former Head of State is promising heaven on earth.
He will return Unibank to the Founder, Kwabena Dufuor, restructure the economy that was already reeling under his watch, employ NDC activists in the security services, and do anything and everything in this country within the four years remaining on his mandate.
Listening to his victory speech in Tamale, I get the impression that the Bole landlord is only waiting for December 7, 2024 to relocate to Jubilee House. In some way, he is right. If you sat an examination and got 98.9 percent, you must be an extraordinary candidate, which is why the former Head of State deserves a drink or two.
I will like to take this opportunity to congratulate my former good friend on his achievement. It is not easy to criss-cross the country convincing men and women to vote for you.
The presidential candidate of the NDC should take it easy and survey the political terrain before making further pronouncements. On Sunday, Mr. John Dramani Mahama took to the podium at the University of Development Studies and made some profound declarations.
He would return Unibank to its Founder, Kwabena Dufuor, and promised to revamp the economy, which is a great declaration. But, in all the euphoria, Mr. John Dramani Mahama must realise that talk is cheap.
Not many Ghanaians have forgotten his almost desolate declaration that the state has consumed all the meat, and that we have got to the bones. In effect, there was not much that could be done to save the economy.
I believe his directive to the sitting Head of State to write his handing-over notes is resonating all over at Jubilee House. President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo must be aware that he has barely one and a half years of his mandate outstanding. I believe the thought of writing his handing-over notes has already crossed his mind. The only outstanding matter is who would benefit from those notes. That will be decided on December 7, 2024.
I believe if you receive 98.9 percent endorsement from your political party, you would be emboldened to think you are on top of the world. The problem is that in the NDC primaries, it is normal for the front runner to be given 98.9 per cent approval. It looks like in the NDC things are done the communist way.
From Chairman Mao Tse Tung to President Xi Jinping every leader in the communist enclave of China has garnered almost 100 percent at the polls.
It looks like the NDC learned a lot from Jerry Rawlings’ revolutionary days. Leaders are to be worshipped and not challenged. I am sorry, but I am beginning to nurse the feeling that in the largest opposition party, you are either with us or against us. You cannot belong to the party and espouse independent ideas.
If I look around and see the likes of Bernard Allotey Jacobs, Samuel Koku Anyidoho and Steven Atubiga, men who toiled for the party now suspended or thrown away from the party that Jerry John Rawlings built, I get the feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong somewhere.
The last time I heard from former Chairman Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, he appears to be complaining that the probity and accountability touted to be the foundation stone of the party was gradually being rolled away.
Brother Sammy Photoo is complaining loud and clear that at the time the leadership was engrossed in the NDC electoral dispute before the Supreme Court of Ghana, the current leadership had written to withdraw huge sums of money from the Electoral Commission being refund for the deposit the party registered with the Commission for the Presidential and Parliamentary elections of 2020.
The NDC contested all the 275 constituencies in the country in the 2020 Presidential and Parliamentary elections. If I hear Brother Sammy Photoo right, the refund has been collected by the present leadership without accounting to the party. I cannot vouch about the whereabouts of the money.
But if it is true that such a quantum amount is in the bosom of one man and his cronies, then it does not augur well for the democratic advancement of the men and women who once shouted: ‘Let the Blood Flow.’
That is one huge problem for the party and its leadership. For me, my worry is how the NDC primaries were carried out with Dr. Kwabena Dufuor opting out at the last minute. I know the former Finance Minister a bit.
I cannot claim to know him that much. In London I used to run a magazine called ‘Ghana Today.’ He was the Managing Director of the Ghana Commercial Bank at Cheapside, one of London’s most expensive neighbourhoods.
I used to approach him for advertisements. His response to my enquiries never gave me a clue that one day he would find himself in the NDC. Back home in Ghana, we did a job for the Asantehene when Otumfuo Osei Tutu II ascended the Golden Stool. Five of us were commissioned to present a paper to the Monarch on how to modernise the palace.
We used to talk, and I remember warning him against taking the job with the NDC as the Finance Minister. He always assured me that he would make a difference. The jury is out on whether or not he was able to make the difference he envisaged.
When I listened in to the press conference he held on the eve of the NDC presidential primaries when he announced his withdrawal from the race, tears welled in the old eyes. Complaining of a photo-album register with very strange inputs, Dr. Dufuor told the world that in those albums, men were identified as women, and women as men.
I know that gender activists are trying to convince the world that men and women are the same. It has got to such a ridiculous extent that even the Methodist Church, Ghana lists human beings as humankind. Even then it is only in the NDC that men become women, and women become men in such a serious exercise as presidential primaries.
In the very end of the pigs rule in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, it was very difficult to differentiate pigs from the men the animals invited to their grand party. So it apparently was that between men and women there was to be no difference in the album register which gave Mr. John Dramani Mahama 98.9 percent endorsement.
Those who emerged victorious on Saturday could tickle themselves and demand hand-over notes. I hope and pray that in their sober moments, Mr. John Dramani Mahama and those propping him up with the ‘Kwasia Bi Nti’ kind of political direction, would reflect on Dr. Dufuor’s withdrawal statement.
“I cannot knowingly drink from a poisoned calabash.” I get the impression that Mr. Kojo Bonsu drank from the ‘poisoned calabash’ and got only 1.1 percent for his troubles.
I thank God that the same ‘poisoned calabash’ would not constitute the register for the 2024 elections. When the clean calabash fails to send Mr. John Dramani Mahama to Jubilee House in December 2024, some of us would be in no mood to listen to another electoral petition without pink sheets.
Strange things are happening as we get ready for the return of the Son of Man. But, it is only in the NDC, I dare state, that men become women.
I shall return!
Ebo Quansah in Acca
