Shame on You, President Mahama!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Dec. 29, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The Flagstaff House put out a press release on the occasion of the inauguration of former Prime Minister Roch Marc Christian Kabore as the new democratically elected President of Burkina Faso. We take this momentous opportunity to heartily congratulate the new President of Burkina Faso. At the same time, we feel obliged to remind President John Dramani Mahama that he was a staunch supporter of the 28-year dictatorship of deposed President Blaise Campaore up to the last second of the end of the latter’s feudal and primitive stranglehold on the Burkinabe people (See “Mahama Attends Inauguration of Kabore” Flagstaff House.com 12/29/15).

If he had a whit of any sense of shame, the Ghanaian leader would rather be apologizing to both Ghanaians and Burkinabes for exhibiting such crass cynicism in the wake of the popular protest demonstrations that expedited the salutary removal of Mr. Campaore from his lavish Presidential Palace in Ouagadougou. It was also heartily remarkable to learn from the hollow self-congratulatory release put out by the Flagstaff House that no prominent members of the Akufo-Addo-led main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) had accompanied President Mahama on his hypocritical trip.

If his overriding motive for attending President Kobore’s inauguration was to reap where he clearly had not sown, we hope the Burkinabe leaders would not spare any chance to soberly remind Mr. Mahama, his rascally associates and opportunistic minions of the same. Indeed, it is rather ironic that nearly every single one of the members of the delegation that represented Ghana in Ouagadougou was a sometime faux-radical revolutionary who did not sincerely believe in democratic principles, ideals and governance. I know the Burkinabe leadership is savvy and sophisticated enough to fully appreciate this painful fact of historical reality.

It was also unpardonably obscene for the Flagstaff House rascals and reprobates to so luridly attempt to take undeserved credit for this yeomanly political achievement of the Burkinabe people. For instance, in the press release that it put out, the Flagstaff House operatives criminally attempted to attribute the salutary changing of the proverbial guard to President Mahama, when the truth of the matter, as could be readily attested by the likes of Mr. Franklin Cudjoe, Head of the IMANI-Ghana policy think-tank, is that President Mahama had actually made a public statement categorically impugning the inalienable righteousness of the street protesters who eventually showed a monarchically entrenched President Campaore the exit.

We also hope that Ghanaian voters, irrespective of ideological suasion or location on the political divide, would come to realize and recognize the stark and painful fact that in President John Dramani Mahama, our beloved nation does not have any enviable image and respectable reputation abroad. As an ECOWAS leader, enthroned largely through the inglorious shenanigans of Benin’s President Yayi Boni, President Mahama did absolutely nothing worthwhile and/or memorable. The man who hails from a predominantly Muslim family and clan, but personally claims to be a Christian by faith and praxis, has yet to make any meaningful public statement on the regressively Jihadist declaration of The Gambia as an Islamic State by President Yahya Jammeh. Would the Muslim minority populace of Ghana feel safe and comfortable, if Parliament were to declare Ghana as a Christian Republic today?

This is what progressive leadership is about – that is, promptly standing up to dictators and tyrants. But on this most significant count, predictably, Ghana’s President Mahama is without any limbs or conviction.

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