Former President John Dramani Mahama
An Executive of the Tema East branch of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Stephen Ashitey Adjei, has accused former President John Mahama of continuing in a life of disrespect to Ghanaian workers, years after he used his presidency to disdain them.
In a write-up, Mr. Ashitey Adjei, who is popularly called Moshake, warns that Mr. Mahama’s disrespect is only festering resentment that he has provoked for himself.
“Mr. Mahama has still not apologized to the Teacher and Nursing trainees that he denied training allowances; and the former Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GHAPOHA) workers whose retrenchment benefits he refused to pay even after his boss, former President Atta Mills had instructed payment.
“This shows that he has not repented of those misdeeds, and is not remorseful about them,” Moshake wrote.
The firebrand NDC Executive member said the former President’s attitude also creates the impression that if he is given the mandate to rule Ghana again, he will repeat the same mistakes, a thing he says does not augur well for him and the NDC which he has led in the past.
It would be recalled that when Mr. Mahama was President, he stopped the age-old arrangement to pay training allowances to nursing and teacher trainees.
This became a fatal mistake for his Presidency and the NDC’s government as the NPP, led by then opposition leader, Nana Akufo-Addo, capitalized on it to successfully paint Mahama and the NDC as wicked.
Mr. Mahama also made the classic political blunder of explaining his thick skin against insults by saying he had become like a dead goat, another political misstatement that became powerful ammunition in the hands of the New Patriotic Party.
Moshake has never forgiven Mr. Mahama for those blunders which cost the NDC power because he says that former President Mahama made those mistakes out of listening to former President Kufuor, the NPP’s first Presidential success.
According to him, Mahama had given ear to Kufuor in a bid to silence the NDC’s party founder, late former President Jerry John Rawlings and that Mahama’s hobnob with Kufuor was what estranged Rawlings almost permanently from the NDC.
But for Moshake, the most grievous mistake Mahama should not have made was disrespecting a last wish of former President John Mills for whom Mahama had served as Vice President, after Mills had issued a fiat for some former workers of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) to be paid.
Mr. Mahama, he says, scoffed Mills’ instruction after Mills had suddenly died
in office, leaving the workers, many of whom have since died of abject poverty, unpaid of their severance entitlements.
“To think that several years after Mahama did these things, he has not had the humility to apologize shows the kind of person that he is,” Moshake wrote, adding, “the unfortunate thing is that, he is a former leader of the NDC and this rubs on all of us. Mahama must not rule Ghana again.”