It happened at the end of last week that there was a press release signed by all ten regional chairmen of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), calling on former President John Mahama to consider calls on him to contest as the party’s presidential candidate for the 2020 polls.
The statement, which sought to create an impression of a united party rallying in unison behind a former president, rather backfired and created more division, acrimony and enmity than hitherto existed.
The Publisher has monitored keenly and come to the conclusion that the ten regional chairmen, by their statement, had done Mr. Mahama more harm than good.
They have exposed themselves biased fathers that have publicly shown preference for a golden child to the disadvantage of other children.
One wonders what went into the thinking of such a move which can be best described as political suicide. Political suicide committed by regional chairman who may be voted out even before the NDC presidential primaries.
Mr. Mahama is a good person. Charming personality. Good communication skills. He did his best as president, yet he lost the polls by an embarrassingly huge margin. He did not expect it. But reality dawned on him after the polls.
One of the causes of his defeat was a perception among his own NDC party folk that he had surrounded himself with people that would not allow any other person come near him. Meanwhile politics is a game of numbers and interests, most of the time, personal interests.
The complaints came from all levels of the party. Some were even made in the public space yet the situation did not change until the polls ended and them there was calm.
One would have thought that in seeking a comeback, John Mahama would first move round to make peace with the several people on influence in his party that had expressed pain at his style of leadership.
Peeved influencers who could not voice out their pain because Mr. Mahama was the incumbent President… and this is Ghana.
Rather, Mr. Mahama is pretending as though the solution to that worrying disconnect and gaping division and factionalism lie in his new found regional ‘Jonny Walker’ shows.
These ten regional chairmen, instead of working with Mr. Mahama to heal the NDC, are gleefully taking sides and showing open bias in his favour. They are not helping him and his quest to return to power.
Mr. Mahama himself has said he has the ‘dead goat’ syndrome so he fears no knife. One would have thought the regional chairman would try to cure that syndrome before thinking of making him candidate.
Rather, all ten chairmen have grabbed butcher knives, pounced on the dead goat and shredding it into piece.
THE PUBLISHER wonders people can continue to commit the same mistake and yet expect a different result. The ten butchers sharing one dead goat should shelve their knives and put on their thinking caps. It is never too late.
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