Mahama is the cause of his own defeat

In the wake of the massive electoral loss by President John Dramani Mahama at the hands of the man who many believe the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court panel cheated out of victory in the 2012 presidential election, I stumbled upon a news article captioned “I Played the Role Mahama Wanted Me to Play – Dotse Malor” (MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 2/28/17). In the article, Mr. Benjamin Dotse Malor, the former Senior Communications Advisor to President Mahama, squarely lays the blame for the National Democratic Congress’ loss of the 2016 general election at the feet of the hubristic protagonist. But the career United Nations’ employee does so suavely and diplomatically.

Mr. Malor claims that when he joined the Mahama Presidency, he had hoped to streamline the communications apparatus at the Flagstaff House to synch it with what pertained at the White House or the U.S. Presidency and Number 10 Downing Street, or the Office of the British Prime Minister. He does not, however, tell his audience what the end result was, but it is quite clear from his comments that he did precisely what President Mahama had instructed him to do, and that the President had, literally ridden roughshod over whatever innovative changes he had intended to effect at the Flagstaff House. The UN operative also claims that he learned a lot from working at the Presidency, but his wistful comments clearly point to the fact that Mr. Malor had been utterly dissatisfied with his job, for he does not tell his radio audience of the show Pulse, hosted by Ms. Gifty Andoh, a single edifying thing that he took away with him from his supposedly “fantastic experience.”

Maybe what he quickly learned at the Mahama Presidency was the imperative need to immediately prepare himself a lucrative and fetching escape route to another job elsewhere, perhaps exactly like the one he left at the New York City Headquarters of the United Nations, once things did not work out or shape up as planned. Which is exactly what happened here, because Mr. Malor is currently back at his New York City post, from where he had been recruited by Mr. Mahama. Indeed, one does not have to go very far in order to arrive at the fact that many of his most talented and successful hired hands at the Presidency had not found Mr. Mahama to be a remarkably competent leader.

To be certain, even Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the former NDC’s Member of Parliament for Seikwa, in the Brong-Ahafo Region, and a Deputy Minister under President Rawlings, and presently the longest-reigning General-Secretary of the main opposition National Democratic Congress, does not the least bit believe that Mr. Mahama won the 2012 presidential election. Rather, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia firmly believes that his homeboy and clansman, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the country’s longest-serving Electoral Commissioner, deliberately and mischievously called the results of Election 2012 in favor of the former Rawlings Communications Minister, because operatives in the Akufo-Addo camp had not been vigilant enough about the ballot count.

We must also significantly point out that Mr. Malor had been only one among a cabal of Ewe- and Northern-descended NDC operatives with whom then-President Mahama had expediently surrounded himself, in his dogged pursuit of what became widely known as the salutary “De-Akanization” of the top-echelon membership of the largely Ewe-founded and chaperoned National Democratic Congress. Once the 2016 electioneering campaign heated up and became too hot for comfort, President Mahama quickly came to envisage his Northern Brothers and Volta Alliance Associates as a grim and looming liability who needed to be promptly chucked out the windows at the Flagstaff House and be quickly replaced with some token faces representative of the Akan ethnic majority, if the Gonja native was to have a fighting chance against a steely determined and better prepared Candidate Akufo-Addo and his perennially and regionally balanced ticket sporting Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the Oxbridge-educated former Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Ghana.

Mr. Mahama would promptly chuck out Messrs. Dotse Malor, Prosper Bani and Raymond Atuguba, his “Thank You” gift to Justice William Atuguba, and quickly shove in Mr. Julius “Butterball” Debrah, that boat-rocking oversized rascal from Akufo-Addo’s own backyard. But it was barely a year to Election 2016 and too obvious a gimmick to fool any critically thinking and politically discerning Ghanaian voter.

 

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