The #FixingTheCountry# Convener, Ernest Owusu Bempah, has observed that former president John Dramani Mahama is not the alternative in solving Ghana’s problem and that it is shameful for him to compare his failed administration to that of President Akufo Addo.
He made this known at a press conference in Accra on Wednesday, this week, in a reply to former president John Dramani Mahama’s Ghana at Crossroads lecture, held on Monday May 2, 2022.
According to Owusu Bempah, “the man doesn’t have a single solution to the country’s problems. Mahama is just desperate to rule the country again, hence his penchant of making false claims of having all the answers to the country’s problems.”
He revealed that former president Mahama’s event, which seeks to draw light on the supposed crossroads that the country currently stands, actually exposed his (Mahama’s) nakedness.
“Indeed, Mr Mahama succeeded in dancing naked in front of the intelligent public by the swipe he took at Akufo-Addo’s government on what he termed as the politicisation of independent state institutions and the dismissal of those who dared to ensure what is right,“ he said.
His outfit, according to Owusu Bempah, is not surprised by Mahama’s callous attempt to try and take a positive credit out of the current global economic crisis and post-pandemic politico-economic vulnerabilities and attempt to present himself as a credible alternative.
He continued that, “for John Mahama to hold a public lecture to boast about his governance prowess when we all know what he dished out for four years as president says a lot about his split personality. The simple truth is Mahama has just exposed himself to public ridicule.”
He furthermore stated that when Mahama was confronted with challenges in government, he infamously compared himself to a dead goat, saying “I have seen more demonstrations and strikes in my first two years. I don’t think it can get worse. It is said that when you kill a goat and you frighten it with a knife, it doesn’t fear the knife because it is dead already. I have a dead-goat syndrome.”
Mr. Owusu Bempah reinstated that when the then Vice President John Dramani Mahama became the president of Ghana by default on July 24, 2012 not many people considered him presidential material enough to lead Ghana’s quest for full middle-income status.
To him, Mahama’s incompetence denied Ghana the much needed respite for economic emancipation, “having attained the rank of lower middle income for during the Kufuor era, Ghana – with a large and rising middle class, estimated at over 47% of the population at the time – was yearning to transit to full middle-income status. Due to the efforts of the Kufuor regime, the country had shown progress in reducing poverty and it outranked its peers on most measures of human development.
The #fixing the country convener noted that Mr John Dramani Mahama. who claimed to have the interest of the poor at heart, never introduced any pro-poor policy or intervention during his administration but rather, he and his opposition NDC had been fighting all social intervention policies introduced under the various NPP administrations, including Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), and National Health Insurance Scheme.”
“Ghana under Mahama faced the multiple problems of a rising cost of living, collapsing businesses, an unsustainable national debt, a lack of inclusive economic growth to address unemployment, poor infrastructure, and rising fiscal and balance of payment deficits,” he told the journalists.
