Former President John Dramani Mahama embarrassed himself when he was the sitting President of Ghana, a Deputy Director of Communications for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Ernest Owusu Bempah has said.
He said Mr Mahama was indescribably messy in managing the economy.
“He broke the presidential code and was simply embarrassing at the job. Truly, Mahama was so tired on the job, and was so inadequate, so unpleasant and so very shabby. And yet he feels like staging a comeback by deploying inferior tactics against the very office he is seeking to come back to,” Mr Bempah said in a statement reacting to the campaign of John Mahama to be elected flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
He added that from the day he was voted out of office in 2016 through to his return as presidential candidate in the run up to 2020 and in recent times, Mr Mahama has demonstrated repeatedly that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that Ghana needs from its presidents.
Whether through indifference or ignorance, he said, the 2020 presidential candidate of the NDC has betrayed fundamental commitments made by all presidents since the dawn of the fourth Republic.
“He has stirred bigotry and ethnic-based political sentiments in ways that can’t be erased by any possible means
“Above all, Mahama has built his political campaign on appeals to bigotry and xenophobia, whipping up resentment against our avowed democratic institutions and norms – from the Electoral Commission(EC), the Police, the Armed Forces, the Judiciary, our traditional rulers and even moral and civil society. Mahama has been on so many sides of so many issues that attempting to assess his policy positions is like shooting at a moving target. He simply spouts slogans and outcomes. He is ill-equipped to be commander in chief.
“Ironically, Mahama is attempting to build his come back candidacy on his so-called achievements as a former president. He claims he did this and that and want another shot at the presidency. But when you go beyond the rhetoric, you will find out that the Mahama era was the worst period in our governance history. In a rational world the NDC first cut their wrists when they nominated Mahama as vice presidential running mate. Then they took poison when they selected him again in 2020 after his disastrous outing in 2016.
“Now he has them on a temporary version of life support. It is in this light that I see the attempt by the NDC to breathe life back and legitimacy into a politically dead Mahama as utterly farcical.”
He added that what Ghana need is clarity, purpose and competence, and not a man who offers only incompetence and angry defiance.
“Every good disaster movie has a scene in which the characters realise that they are in mortal peril, that the threat they all fear is much closer than anyone had thought. Whatever you do as a Ghanaian, resist the siren song of a dangerous demagogue. Mahama is of no good. His record of lying and incompetent makes him unfit to be President again.
“And I believe a second stint for him at the Presidency would be even more of a disaster than the first one, His return would split, and possibly destroy, this country. It’s time for the people of Ghana to seriously consider that Mahama is unfit to be president again.”