Who gets my vote in 2024?

In my hometown of Pramso in Dr. Adutwum’s Bosumtwi constituency, deciding to vote for Rawlings instead of Adu Boahen, a typical UP and Dr. Busia adherent, was an anathema. My late father had always hyped the brilliance and leadership of Dr. Busia in our conversations, and my late father was one of the leaders of the NPP in our town in 1992. But, I’ve always been a person of my convictions. Having completed 6th Form at the then Labone Secondary School earlier in 1992, and having already voted in the referendum to usher in the 1992 Constitution, I felt I was mature enough to decide who to vote for in the presidential and parliamentary elections that year.

Much as my late father and the majority of my nuclear and extended family supported the NPP and Adu Boahen, I was not convinced by a campaign that only highlighted the human rights abuses under Rawlings without telling Ghanaians what Adu Boahen and the NPP were going to do for the country. I lost a few friends and I still remember one of my younger brothers insulting me for my decision to vote for Rawlings and the NDC.

Then I came to the University of Ghana in 1994. The CHRAJ corruption investigations of some government officials, occasioned by the Chronicle and its then editor, Mr. Kofi Koomson, and the subsequent government white paper letting the culprits off the hook, changed my mind about Rawlings and the NDC. Coupled with everything our lecturers said during the years prior to the 1996 elections, including Prof. Atta Mills who was my company law lecturer, I was even more upset when the late President Mills agreed to become the Vice Presidential candidate of Rawlings.

So in 1996, much as I didn’t know too much about a certain John Agyekum Kufuor, I was more than happy to vote for the Great Alliance. The 2000 elections were a given. The NDC had lost the electorate and Kufuor was the obvious choice, not my former lecturer Prof. Mills. I duly voted for Kufuor and would do so again in 2004.

Enter the ‘incorruptible’, ‘human rights’ lawyer, the ‘ultimate patriot’ with ideas to develop Ghana. I was in no mood for university lecturer romantics. Akufo-Addo would get my votes in every election till he finally became President! But by 2019, I was ready to not even turn out to vote in the 2020 elections, except the NDC decided to bring back President John Mahama.

President John Mahama. I still remember when my wife and I had a conversation about how we would vote for him if he were ever to contest a presidential election. That was when we felt he was such a brilliant and unifying force as a communications person, both in Parliament and as a Minister of Communications. But then his regime as president, both after serving the remaining term of the late President Mills and after his own full term from 2012 to 2016, greatly disappointed me. I could not bring myself to have him back in 2021 as President, even though I was then disappointed with the Akufo-Addo-Bawumia Administration.

I won’t disclose my interactions with Veep Bawumia in 2016 and 2017, but suffice it to say that those party footsoldiers who have been attacking me would eat their words if they knew what I know. That said, unlike Kofi Bentil, I won’t cut the Veep any slack for the current mess of the economy. He is brilliant and got all the technical advice he needed to change this country. But he failed to grab the rare opportunity he had. He is now as much to blame for our woes as a country as Akufo-Addo and Ken Ofori-Atta.

If Ghanaians were to re-elect the NPP in 2024, it’d be the final nail to the coffin of our democracy and governance, because it would mean that there are zero political consequences for bad governance bad leadership, and bad economic management. I just can’t have that kind of outcome on my conscience. And, given we have no realistic options beyond the NDC and the NPP, at least in the near term, I’m prepared to block my nose and vote for President Mahama in 2024, and it has nothing to do with any ‘hate’ for Veep Bawumia.

He that has an ear, let them hear!