Features and Opinions

Ghana goes to polls tomorrow to elect a president and 275 parliamentarians.

Ghana’s President John Mahama is a man of the people who is known for his good humour, but forced onto the back foot by his country’s lacklustre growth in the runup to elections.

I can’t believe that the long-awaited Election 2016 is less than a week away. And it’s interesting that there has been no shortage of memorable developments this election is generating, such as what one can term the ‘strange case of the missing ballot boxes’.

The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) yesterday held a press conference and wildly accused President John Dramani Mahama and his brother, Ibrahim Mahama, of attempting to bribe the Northern Regional Chairman of the NPP, Daniel Bugri Naabu. Mustapha Hamid, who addressed the media, said the intention was to get Bugri Naabu to turn against the NPP’s flag bearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, portray him as a divisive ethnocentric bigot and destroy his chances of winning the 2016 elections.

THE BAWUMIA FACTOR IN THE 2016 ELECTIONS: WHY IT REPRESENTS A MORTAL THREAT TO THE NDC AND AN OPPORTUNITY TO TRANSFORM THE BASIS OF PARTY POLITICS IN GHANA.

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is the vice presidential candidate of the NPP in the upcoming December 7 elections. It is not in the nature of presidential contests for a party or campaign to aim a significant portion of its attacks and propaganda at the vice presidential candidate of its main rivals. Of course, being an integral part of a presidential ticket, a VP candidate is fair game in a hotly contested presidential election. The point here, though, is one of proportion. Why has the NPP’s Bawumia become such a thorn in the flesh of the NDC and a focal point of rival attack and attention in this year’s contest for the presidency?

I stand accused. I stand accused of hating the President of the Republic of Ghana, H.E. John Dramani Mahama. I stand accused of hating the National Democratic Congress (NDC). And others accuse me of hating the government. This is because of the work I do. I’m an investigative journalist. And a writer.

Before writing this piece, we were hesitant. Not so much because we were afraid of being inaccurate, but because we didn’t want to hurt the sensibility of our friend, Kwabena Boadu who could best be described as a man of words.

Last weekend, President John Dramani Mahama stirred the dangerous beehive of ethnicity. And he got himself deadly verbal stings from across the country. Even people who have no right to open their mouths in this matter had their bite. It reminded me of Dr. Paa Bobo’s song, “Abaa saa.”

IN this election Ghana is at a crossroads. The current NDC government is throwing away the economic credibility of the nation, and President Mahama’s handling of the economy has raised serious questions that need answers.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all,” Craing Gang.

But that was not our wish when death unexpectedly laid its cold hands on Madam Eva Lokko, an accomplished woman of our land. Her sudden demise came as a huge surprise to many because no one heard about her ailment.

The Government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) under President John Evans Atta-Mills, fraudulently paid a financier of the party GHc 51.2 million cedis between 2010 and 2011. A Supreme Court Judge, Justice Jones Dotse said it appeared those who facilitated the payment“entered into an alliance to create, loot and share the resources of this country as if a brigade had been set up for such an enterprise”.

The initial title of this article was, “Any idiot can borrow money and build projects.” I had to change it because those who might not read beyond the headline would, as usual, accuse me of insulting the President. But that is the essence of this article.

How did this just happen? Unusual, unexpected, strange, weird, unprecedented and now bizarre are but few of the words used by mainstream media to describe a bitter election that has produced Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States of America .

It is exactly one month to the crucial Presidential and Parliamentary elections, but everything is in a limbo. Instead of the count-down, we are now counting the number of court suits against the Electoral Commission.

Three months ago, I was told by a scientist of the University of Cape Coast that Ghana’s main water bodies will almost all have been destroyed in the next five years, if things go on the way they are going.

President John Mahama hardly delivers great speeches. It is one sad characteristic of our presidents in recent times. Mr. John Mahama is a good writer, but considering the heavy burden he bears, he cannot have time to write all his speeches himself.

Mrs Angela Merkel (AM) walks into her living room at the end of another day in her life as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) are fiercely fighting for the hearts and minds of people in the three regions of northern Ghana – the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions.

Anytime I use the Accra-Kumasi road, undoubtedly the busiest network in the country, I come back annoyed. I get angry because of what I detect as a deliberate policy of this administration, not to bring the construction of the 31.7 kilometre Teacher-Mante-Suhum-Apedwa stretch of the 250 kilometre Accra-Kumasi road, to a definite conclusion.

When the member of parliament for North Dayi Constituency, George Loh, was given the opportunity to critique the manifesto of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), he decided to sink low.

Money rules the earth. Just look at the seductive power of money over humanity and you can see how all other subjects have now become footnotes to economics. The mother of money is of course, business.

Chelsea have signed a kit sponsorship contract with Nike understood to be worth £900million over 15 years, the biggest in the club's history.

When I lived in the United Kingdom, one of the highlights of election night for me was the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, (OMRLP). The leader of the party, Screaming Lord Sutch and his outlandish outfits fitted perfectly my image of the quirky English.

The first queen of England, Queen Elizabeth, was regarded as too controversial for mainly three reasons; the fact that she was a woman had the people doubt her ability to rule, her refusal to wed was a threat to getting an heir to the throne; and her ban of Catholicism. But incidentally; her marriage to England proved successful.

The tragedy we face as a nation is that most of the people who seek to lead us are con men. The stories they tell us to convince us to vote for them are mostly lies and the vocabulary they use all come from the lexicon of the con artist. But why should we complain? Telling lies to the ones we claim we love is a Ghanaian thing! Ask the young men who seek to sow their wild oats among unfortunate young girls. They break their hearts as they ‘con’, ‘boss,’ spin them ‘lines’ and tell them outright lies straight in the face by promising to love them all their lives. All the nice rhetoric means nothing, except as a window dressing for a possible future broken heart. Sounds familiar?

A tragedy of the 21st century for Dagbang, the Northern regions and Ghana as a whole, occurred today, 3rd October 2016, in the death of Dr. Abdulai Choggu. Dr Choggu’s death symbolizes the fall of a mighty tree or the brightest of all stars.

I spent the past weekend in Cape Coast. Like any other town or city in the country, one thing was obvious. The smell of election was very thick in the air. And one hardly moves without seeing signs of the impending elections – billboards and campaign posters advertising all manner of characters, who need our mandate to have unfettered access to the national purse.

I was chatting with a woman lecturer in Communication Studies from Nigeria yesterday, who said: “In Africa, a whole ocean separates official pronouncements from action.” She was absolutely right.

It is official! Better Ghana is dead. The burial and memorial service dates have not been officially announced, but it is as clear as tomorrow is Saturday that the concept is interred with the mortal remains of the deceased leader of the party, who originally out-doored the mantra.Political connoisseurs never left the old Slave Castle when President John Dramani Mahama beat a hasty retreat from the Castle, following the death and interment of Prof. Evans Atta Mills at Asomdwee.