John Mahama
As Ghanaians besiege the polling booths across the country on December 7, 2024, there is a character on the ballot paper that the voters must “shine” their eyes before they “leap”, so to speak.
That presidential candidate must be watched with an eagle’s eyes or the vigilance of a snake because when given the opportunity to take the saddle from July 2012 to January 2017, he messed up and threw the country into turmoil.
The presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Mahama, who once served as Vice President and later the ultimate, President of the Republic, has mounted billboards at vantage points asking the electorate to vote for him again because he is trustworthy, reliable and honest. Is John Mahama really trustworthy judging from his pronouncements on major national issues such as the economy, LGBTQI+ and Free Senior High School (SHS)? On these issues, the NDC’s presidential candidate has been very inconsistent, changing the goalpost for electoral advantage.
John Mahama is consistently inconsistent. Not too long ago, John Mahama claimed credit for the Free SHS, when during the run-up to the 2016 general election, the NDC published over 40 advertisements demonising free education.
John Mahama said the decision by President Akufo-Addo to introduce the Free SHS would collapse the country’s education system, warning that Ghana must not introduce Free SHS “on the whimsical promises of a desperate politician.”
Faced with a backlash from the NDC’s criticism of the ever popular Free SHS, John Mahama made a U-turn in 2020, claiming he started Free SHS in 2015.
We are hopeful Ghanaians are listening to the dissonance from John Mahama and his NDC about the audacious Free SHS and consign the perennial presidential candidate of our times to a third consecutive defeat, never to appear on the political landscape again.
It is sad that John Mahama, who benefitted from the Northern Scholarship Scheme, frowns on the same opportunity to give education to children of school-going age, regardless of status. The NDC leader and the apparatchiks sing a new song about Free SHS every election year.
Now, John Mahama is preaching a review of the Free SHS, and the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has warned the people that anytime the NDC talks about a review it means cancellation. Just a few days ago, John Mahama claimed Free SHS has come to stay, saying in the unlikely event that he is elected, his focus will be improving the quality of education rather than cancelling the Free SHS.
The stance of the NDC on Free SHS exposes the party and its leader as trying to perpetuate class hegemony in our society. That is why John Mahama has moved the debate to the level where he thinks our education system must operate like a tier system where schools like Achimota must be the preserve of the well-to-do in the country.
Free SHS as introduced by the NPP government has broken the preserve of Achimota and other big schools for people like John Mahama who believes in the creation of a class society. It is against this backdrop that we urge farmers, artisans, traders, drivers, public servants and even the well-to-do, to vote against John Mahama on December 7, to block him from creating a class society, a phenomenon that the Free SHS is gradually eroding with children of the poor being admitted to first class schools such as Achimota, PRESEC, Wesley Girls, St Augustine’s, Prempeh and Opoku Ware.
When it comes to the vexed issue of LGBTQI+, Ghanaians tolerate John Mahama despite his earlier position on gays and lesbians. He is on record to have said that we should allow everybody to express his or her sexual orientations without inhibition, in addition to his “flirtatious” links to one of the global advocates of LGBTQI+, Andrew Solomon.
The NDC operates like the character in folklore who goes to muddy the water upstream and comes downstream to ask who caused the mischief.
