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Opinions of Saturday, 9 August 2014

Columnist: Al-Hajj

‘Push JM out’ Builds up

…as more strikes, demonstrations

& civil disobedience loom


Even as President John Dramani Mahama continues to labour in find lasting solutions to the myriad economic and social problems confronting his West African cocoa growing nation, hardline opposition elements in cahoots with the country’s so-called middle class, clergy and the academia are fervently plotting to re-enact the despicable events of 1966, 1979 and 1981that led to the overthrow of Nkrumah, Acheampon and Liman governments respectively, The aL-hAJJ can report.
While the modus operandi of the anti-Mahama crusaders within the political opposition are similar to the happenings that led to the 1966, 1979 and 1981 coups, it is been craftily couched this time round in a way not to resort to the use of arms or a single bullet fired.
The stratagem is such that the military and other security services will be kept aloof while civil action and mass protests across the country would take the lead in toppling the Mahama-led government.
The plotters are anticipating that the state and its apparatuses including the state’s monopoly over force or coercive action will be overwhelmed and neutralized by the power of the masses who according to the plan; are to pour onto the streets of the country’s major cities simultaneously.
State security personnel will likely be rendered as spectators in the ensuing melee and there are those who are expecting them to openly side with their civilian counterparts by goading them to continue with the strife, a situation akin to what happened in the now catastrophic Arab Spring.

The aL-hAJJ’s Intelligence revealed the ‘civilian coupists’ and the anarchists among them plan in the coming days to intensify their campaign of destabilization through labour agitations, demonstrations and strikes with the sole purpose of paralyzing the Mahama government to set it on collision course with the people.

This action is eventually to rope in majority of Ghanaians, particularly the teeming number of students who will be at home as a result of strikes by lectures and many others who are likely to lose loved ones arising out of health workers strikes, to rebel against the Mahama administration.
The central theme that will cut across all these anticipated mass protest is that the Mahama administration has failed woefully to resolve the problems with the economy and the widespread reports of corruption including SADA, GYEEDA, SUBAH, 2014 WORLD CUP, among others.
They will then call for the immediate and unconditional resignation of the President and his government.

Predictably, elements of the opposition New Patriotic Party, whose forebears employed similar underhand tactics in the days leading to the overthrow of Nkrumah and Liman, are reported to be neck deep in this evil plot to kick out the Mahama-led government.

While in recent past, NPP functionaries including twice failed presidential candidate, Nana Akufo Addo have ceaselessly advocated for democracy and the election of presidents through the ballot box, intelligence reports intercepted by this paper reveal the contrary.
Behind the scenes, the opposition in collaboration with their cohorts in academia, the middle class, the clergy and a section of the media; are reported plotting, fanning and fuelling the despicable conspiracy to violently remove the government using mass action.
As in both the Nkrumah and Liman overthrows, members of the UP tradition who were foremost beneficiaries had a number of their key members drafted into the new administrations that followed.

After the overthrow of Ghana’s first president, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s government, his arch-rivals in the UP tradition, Dr K A Busia and Edward Akufo-Addo, as a reward package for their “behind the scenes campaign” had their efforts crowned with positions of Prime Minister and ceremonial President respectively.
Similarly, When the AFRC/PNDC removed Dr. Hilla Liman and the pro-Nkrumah PNP government in December 1981, the likes of Justice D.F Annan, Iddrisu Mahama, Dr Obed Asamoah and former president Kufuor, all of them key members of the UP stock played key roles in the subsequent Rawlings regime.
What is reported to have emboldened the Mahama haters to further press the trigger for the realization of this evil plot, according to this paper’s sources is the seeming backing of the Western powers whom report says are angered by Mahama-government’s initial stubborn rejection of an IMF bailout to salvage the current sinking economy and instead putting all its hopes towards China, a geo-political foe of the United States and its Western allies across the Atlantic.
Sources say the Western powers are apprehensive of the government’s so-called “home grown” economic measures whose main objective is to sideline the Western-backed multilateral financial institutions in finding solutions to the nation’s fiscal crisis.
“If the policy had worked to lift Ghana out of the present economic doldrums, other countries across the continent may turn away from the IMF and World Bank to apply the Ghanaian experience (home grown economic policies) to salvage their economies any time they face crisis.”
However, with the expected easing of the economic challenges and a potential stabilization of the currency against the major international currencies and likely injection of new inflows into the economy on the back of the country’s decision to join the IMF, the modern day coup plotters are said to have begun altering their strategies.

They are now going to rely on labour agitations, industrial unrest and also disinformation campaigns, with the aim of “attacking” key sectors of the economy. Their excuse this time around would be that the government’s decision to go for a bailout from IMF is a sell-out and a potential trigger of more hardship and social inequalities in the Ghanaian society.
With the debilitating erratic power supply almost becoming a thing of the past, and the fast depreciating currency about to be arrested coupled with the anticipated huge oil and gas revenues to accrue to the under pressure Mahama administration to halt the ongoing hardships, the new strategy by the anti –Mahama elements is also to ceaselessly complain about corruption in government, high fuel and utility tariffs, judgment debts and government high borrowings to possibly get their surrogates in civil society, clergy, trade union, teachers, health and student unions, academia and middle class etc, to join the rebellion against government.
After successfully getting POTAG, UTAG, and others to go on strike, the ‘enemies of the state’ are said to be pressing the knob to convince GNAT, NAGRAT, GMA and other labour unions to lay down their tools in the coming days “to teach the government a bitter lesson”.
In line with this, TUC has led the pact with the recent nationwide demonstration and a more sophisticated version of it is said to be in the offing. To keep the recent ill-fated ‘occupy flag staff house’ and “red Friday’ campaigns by some middle class in the country on, students unions are being instigated to take to the street in solidarity with their lecturers. Stay tuned