Having just got out of bed with intent to write about either the uncompleted but ongoing Kumawu hospital with all its attendant infrastructural defects and, or an advice to the Chief Justice, Mrs Theodora Georgina Wood, I miraculously chanced upon a publication on Ghanaweb titled, “Let’s be thankful to Mahama – Akufo-Addo to Ghanaians” under their General News of Saturday, 31 December 2016.
The web link below takes any interested public reader to the full story.
I decided to suspend the other write-ups as aforementioned but to quickly publish my agreements and disagreements with President-elect Nana Akufo Addo on his views about the Outgoing President Mahama with regard to his peaceful concession to defeat after the results of the presidential Election 2016 unfolded to the greatest dismay and shock to the NDC with President Mahama inclusive, but to the overwhelming joy and expectation of the greater majority of discerning and economically-suffering Ghanaians.
Ghanaians had massively prayed for, campaigned for, and voted for a change of government from President Mahama and NDC to Nana Akufo Addo and NPP. I was on the ground and could give a first witness or eye account to what went on in Ghana before, during and after the Election Day (Wednesday 7 December 2016). The public euphoria to VOTE OUT President Mahama and his publicly obvious corrupt, incompetent, clueless and insulting government was beyond any reasonable person’s gumption.
Ghanaians in their overwhelming numbers could no longer have President Mahama and NDC remain in office for even a single day going beyond 7 January 2017 hence the difference in both the parliamentary and presidential election results as seen in favour of Nana Akufo Addo and the NPP.
Therefore, President Mahama had, and has, no choice to resist the public’s practically-expressed wish through the ballot, using their thumps’ power (“kokromoti power”) to send him fleeing the presidency. How could he have proved stubborn saying he was not going to concede defeat as former President Rawlings was once noted to be doing until prevailed upon and cajoled by international leaders and presidents to hand over power to then incoming or President-elect John Agyekum Kufuor? Rawlings was only behaving a fool since his two-term constitutional mandate had come to an end. He only feared about the skeletons in his closet knowing how he had wrongly maltreated or killed many innocent Ghanaians he perceived to be his political rivals, the usual stupid African politician’s mentality of exterminating their political opponents to rather remain in office for good.
I know the voted against President Yayha Jammeh of Gambia, as stupid, assassin and undemocratic a leader as he is, is now refusing to concede defeat, reneging on his earlier concession of defeat to, and congratulatory message to Gambia’s president-elect Adama Barrow.
This attitude of fools like Yayha Jammeh should not move President-elect Nana Akufo Addo to praise the Outgoing President Mahama for showing a sense of majority by peacefully accepting his defeat and peacefully arranging to exit power. He had no choice but to do so. Did the special voters comprising the security forces, army and police and the media and other essential services workers not vote massively against him? Did the majority of Ghanaians not vote against him? Where then was his chance of succeeding if he had stupidly put up any resistance of refusing to hand over power?
Going back to the Gambian issue, President Yayha Jammeh risks being whisked to incarceration for the rest of his life by the new and ongoing world order as had happened to Charles Taylor of Liberia, former President Gbagbo of Ivory Coast and the capture, prosecution, imprisonment and death of then Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and his accomplice Radovan Karadzic charged with war crimes against humanity.
I shall neither condemn nor disagree totally with President-elect Nana Akufo Addo for praising Outgoing President Mahama for conforming to what is his obligatory duty of handing over power without having any second option unless he wanted to be treated in the same manner in the end like what happened to President Gbagbo and others.
Africans and Ghanaians especially, should learn not to praise stupid African leaders who reluctantly in the end yield in to pressure to do what is expected of them. Once you genuinely lose general elections, it is your civic duty and obligation to hand over power peacefully without resorting to any silly antics where you have to be diplomatically persuaded to perform what is required of you. I have no stomach for such stupid African behaviour or mentality.
President Mahama is a good riddance for Ghana, as corrupt, tribalist, incompetent and lawless as he was.
He does not deserve any praise for conceding to defeat unless he wanted to go to prison for the rest of his life like his other incumbent but clearly foolish colleague-Presidents as mentioned above.
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