The campaign towards the 7th December 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections was most vicious and acrimonious. However, the results of the elections were most convincing and incontestable. Nana and the NPP must be shocked, not because they won, but the extent of the margin by which they won which must be the widest since 1992.
One singular event that ensured Nana and NPP victory was the investment the party made into monitoring the polls from the Polling Stations all the way to the EC Headquarters. The hi-tech monitoring of the results and the fact that the NPP and the TV stations were getting the attested results even faster than the EC, gave the EC little room to manipulate the results. No one is far from right in saying that the NDC has been winning elections allegedly with the connivance of the EC. Certain happenings within the NDC allude to this allegation.
Election Winning Mechanism
· Mr. Vincent Assiseh, the NDC’s formidable former Press Secretary was reported to have said “that the NDC was a machine for winning political power than a democratic political institution that accommodates all shades of political opinion.” (Source: ghanaweb dated 1st November 2001.) He was reported to have explained further that the NDC was in reality an “an election winning mechanism and not a political party. As an election winning mechanism, the NDC will do anything including bribing the EC to turn the tables in their favour.
· This bribery allegation was confirmed early this year when Mr. Matthias Mokono Wilson, a former accountant of the NDC took the party to court over receipts covering a total of Ghc5,544,630.00 the NDC paid to the EC. (Source: ghanaweb 16th Feb. 2016) The question is, “What service did the EC provide the NDC and the NDC had to pay GHC5,544,630 in cash to the EC?
· The posturing of Mrs. Charlotte Osei, the chairperson of the EC became a problem and made many observers became suspicious of the EC. The NDC was the only party that virtually agreed with the EC on any position of the EC. The NDC became the unofficial spokesman for the EC. Apparently it was this posturing of the EC chair that prompted the Chairman for the National Peace Council, Most Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Asante to admonish the Electoral Commission (EC) to ensure that the ongoing presidential and parliamentary elections were credible, free, fair and transparent. He was said to have further charged them to ensure that the results were not challenged or contested by any political party and the only way they could make that happen was to make the process clean. (source: ghanaweb.com 7th December 2016)
The way Mr. Afari Djan fumbled and disgraced himself at the Election Petition trial in 2013 left many people to believe that Nana Addo lost the elections to the Mr. Afari Djan’s EC and not to Mr. John Mahama. Many were left in no doubt the elections the NDC had been winning in the past with very small margins were due to manipulation of the results by the Mr. Afari Djan’s EC. No doubt Mr. Afari Djan left the court badly bruised.
Corruption
If the EC could not rig the election in favour of the NDC this time, it was the NDC that advertised its defeat right from the day John Mahama assumed office as President. The NDC would not own up to the fact that Ghanaians became fed up with their opulent lifestyles and the impudence with which they conduct themselves right from the beginning. For instance:
· Ghanaians have been asking how a “small boy” like Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, who had not signed for a paycheque before, had Gh¢25,000 allegedly stolen in his car by the driver. This is how the Chronicle newspaper, the source of the story put it. “At a time most Ghanaians could not afford basic needs at the Yuletide, it is depressing to note that a deputy minister in this moribund administration, has had GH¢25,000 stolen from his car.” (Source: ghanaweb.com dated 4th Jan. 2013). The implication is that there is no space in his bungalow to keep the money than in his car.
· Social media is awash with stories of babies with “pickaxe” teeth who owned Fuel Stations valued in millions of Ghana Cedis and were building mansions all over prime areas in Accra and elsewhere. How did they come by the money within these short years in politics?
· The spate of corruption in the system has become a regular feature in the mass media. There were reports that Ghana was so steeped in corruption to the extent that the country was being used as a case study for graft at the University of Pennsylvania. (Source: ghanaweb.com of 21 December 2015). If this is true, then corruption is the legacy President has left for Ghana politics.
As Mr. Ivor Greenstreet puts it, “Ghanaians are watching oo”! And indeed, Ghanaians were watching.
Mr. John Mahama Underwriting own defeat
President John Mahama also indorsed his own defeat and that of the NDC.
He is one President who has been tagged with specific corruption cases in his term of office and indeed a case of impeachment was made against him in Parliament..
· Mr. Martin Amidu told the whole world that President Atta Mills, Asomdwehene, of all persons set up a committee on his own Vice, Mr. John Dramani Mahama to investigate John’s involvement in the bribery allegations in the purchase of Embraer aircrafts from Brazil for the Ghana Air Force. For a President to set up an investigating committee on his own sitting Vice President is news.
· In June 2016, Multimedia’s investigative journalist, Manasseh Azure exposed a Ford Expedition vehicle that was gifted to President John Mahama by a Burkinabe contractor, Djibril Kanazoe. The estimated cost of the vehicle was $60,000. The businessman was said to have won two contracts worth over GH¢100 million after the president took possession of the vehicle. What is a $60,000 car to a President who travels in a convoy of cars? The joke in town was that Mr. John Mahama was hypersensitive to bribe.
· His pardoning of the Montie III confirmed to observers that Mr. John Mahama was indecisive. As President he could not withstand the pressure put on him by the grassroots in the party. That he pardoned the Montie III against the advice of his own lawyer made matters worse for him and many people told him he would suffer for that decision.
· Above all was the mismanagement of the economy and its impact on the ordinary Ghanaian. Indeed, if the old lady in the village cannot read all the corruption cases in the media, she feels the full impact of the mismanagement of the economy. She knows the price of fuel has gone up more than five times and transportation cost has also gone up drastically from what they were in Kufuor’s time. She knows the price of fertilizer was cheaper and affordable during Kufuor’s time. She was a beneficiary of the mass spraying of cocoa farms programme during Kufuor’s time. So Mr. John Mahama should understand why the people of Kasoa are saying that they needed change and not interchange.
The defeat of President Mahama and the NDC was obvious and expected. Their defeat was an event which was written boldly on the wall. Mr. John Mahama and the NDC are playing the ostrich game by behaving as if they do not know what caused their humiliating defeat. If they had their ears to the ground, they would know that the ordinary Ghanaian was only waiting patiently for 7th December 2016 to vent his frustration and anger on the NDC.
Predictions of the Results Election Results
For the way things were going under President Mahama, it was very easy to predict the outcome of this year’s elections. Many Ghanaians, including this writer dreamt about the NDC loss. Prophets and Sheikhs prophesied it. Even some fetish priests prophesied it and cursed all those who would do anything to thwart Nana and NPP’s victory. All the serious poll surveys, except that of Ben Ephson’s, were consistent that Nana and the NPP would win. Prophet Owusu Bempah was so sure of his prophesy that he went ahead to call for the burning of his church if Nana should lose.
The most insightful of the predictions was the one given by Sheikh Ustaz Sham-una Jibril who predicted that “the NPP’s flagbearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was going to emerge as the winner in the upcoming elections with 53.47% and John Mahama 44.96%
The table below shows the comparative results of the presidential elections since 2008.
Readers should note how exact the prediction of the Sheikh is to the actual results.
Nana Addo’s convincing victory over John Mahama in the 2016 elections when compared with the previous election results confirm the suspicion that there were problems with the previous years’ election results. The only explanation could be that Mrs. Charlotte Osei’s EC of 2016 could not manipulate the figures for the NDC as the Afari Djan’s EC was doing in the past.
Nana Addo’s Victory
The results of this year’s elections should also shame NPP bigots who claimed that, even though Nana Addo won the primaries hands down, he should not stand for the presidential race because he was not attractive to floating voters. Where are the likes of Nana Ohene Ntow, the former General Secretary of the NPP?
Nana Addo’s victory was a process which began following the 2013 election petition where the Court Supreme Court ordered the Electoral Commission to carry out reforms in our electoral system. This was further enhanced by the Courts ruling in October 2016 when it ordered the Electoral Commission to make collation sheets for Presidential and Parliamentary elections available to all parties and their agents after close of polls. That closed and sealed the door to rigging of the elections by the EC. .
The unsung heroes of Nana Addo’s victory are;
1. The Supreme Court’s handling of all the cases that came before it and the transparency it enshrined into the election process culminating in its decision for the EC to make the poll results available to all the parties at the end of the polls.
2. The petitioner, Kwesi Nyame Tease-Eshun, the former Director of Research at Parliament, who sought to expose flaws in the CI 94 that would govern the 2016 general elections and got the Supreme Court to rule on the signing and distribution of the “pink sheets” to all parties.
3. Mr. Joseph Anokye, the computer expert who developed the software that enabled the NPP to effectively monitor the voting in real time as well as his dedicated staff and the polling agents.
4. Above all, the Ghanaian voter who is now more intelligent, wider awake and cannot be taken for granted. He knows the difference between infrastructural development and economic survival. He knows when he wants change and when he wants interchange.
The Blame Game
It does not appear that the NDC has understood the dynamics of the new economic and political regime prevailing in the country. They have already started the blame game, blaming individuals and groups in the party for their failures, even the founder of the party. They do not realize that their failure was collective, systemic and cannot be attributed to one person.
Nana’s victory has exposed the endemic and structural weaknesses in the NDC, the impunity of the party hierarchy and the anti-social posture of the entire membership. The party has been rejected by Ghanaians and it is finished as a party. The party will remain in opposition for a very long time and would require extra human effort to come back to winning ways.
The NDC Has No Soul
The party as it stands at the moment has no soul. The CPP has Kwame Nkrumah as the soul of the party; the NPP is of Danquah, Busia, Dombo tradition. The PPP has Papa Kwasi Ndoum. These parties were founded and cultured on the vision, ideologies and traditions of their leaders. They look to these leaders for direction and guidance on matters of principles.
The NDC as at today has nobody who can be described as the embodiment of the party. It has dumped its founder, Jerry John Rawlings who did not campaign for his own party as he used to do. He now advises Nana Addo. Capt. Kojo Tsikata abandoned the party long ago. Dr. Obed Asamoah was whipped out of the NDC many years ago. Atta Mills would have been the best person to occupy this position but sadly he is gone home.
Unfortunately, John Dramani Mahama does not qualify and does not have the charisma for such a role in the NDC for the following reasons among others:
· He is a communication expert who does not know how to communicate with his subjects.
o His endorsement of the song, “yentia obiaa” to wit, we won’t listen to anybody. His “dead goat syndrome” statement in reply to Ghanaians who were agitating for better condition of service. All implied that the President was impervious to plight of his citizens.
o The President looked into the face of Ghanaians and told them that they have short memories. Is he not aware that he was insulting Ghanaians?
· When a subject described him as incompetent; his reaction was that the person did not know what is “incompetent” because that person had not been a President before and that he could only contain such comments from J J Rawlings or John Kuffuor. That is childish talk. The obvious question is, when and where was President before he became President of Ghana?
· Mr. Mahama is reported to have written in the book “My first coup d’état” that he is someone who indecisive. His indecision is demonstrated in his pardoning of the Montie 3 when he pardoned the three against the advice of his own legal adviser. In a serious case like this, he crumbled under the pressure of the grass roots of the party.
· He is the only Ghanaian who has publicly acknowledged that his good friend is a world renowned gay advocate. Homosexuality is an anathema to the Ghanaian culture and beliefs.
· On the campaign trail, he could lose his balance in the things he says. The Chairman for the National Peace Council, Most Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Asante was compelled to admonish presidential candidates including President John Dramani Mahama and their supporters to be mindful of their utterances. He urged candidates to desist from personal attacks and the use of abusive language and rather speak on issues when they mount political platforms. .
The End of the NDC
Mr. John Mahama, as a person, carries too many excess-baggage to make him a role model to rally a defeated party like the NDC. The NDC is likely to be in opposition for a very long time. The only way they can make their way out of the oblivion is for Nana Addo and the NPP to fail miserably in fulfilling their promises to the people of Ghana.
If Nana should fulfil half of his promises, that will spell more doom for the NDC and they will lose more sympathisers. In the course of their work, it is more likely that some of the NDCs dubious deals will be unearthed. If this happens, that will be the end of the NDC in Ghana politics.
Fortunately, the founder of the party, Papa J is still alive. He still has the charisma and commands the support of the grassroots. If Papa J will take over his party, all the babies with “chisel teeth” and the corrupt elements in the party hierarchy will naturally vamoose. Papa J will then have the free hand to restructure the party whose manifesto he signed with his blood.
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