GHANA: The Curious Case Of President John Mahama’s ‘Me Alone And Me Again’ Politics

John Mahama image via Modern Ghana

BY KWAME ABREFAH

ACCRA (MODERN GHANA)--The former president of Ghana, John Mahama, has started his campaign to become president of Ghana for the second time. If he is successful, he will be the first person to have won the presidency on two separate occasions, after having suffered a humiliating defeat in his bid for a second term in office. Mr. Mahama is so wealthy that nobody in his party can stop his likely victory in his party's presidential primary next month. This will set up a re-run of the 2016 election with his main political opponent, Nana Akufo-Addo, the current president of the country.

When he announced his decision to ran for president the third time, Mr. Mahama said he owes a “duty to God and my country to take our great party back into government, to right the wrongs of the past and to put an end to the cries of the people under the current dispensation.” This statement implies that he has reached deep into his conscience and has decided to correct the “wrongs of the past”. President Mahama has not, however, specified what past wrongs he is seeking to correct. Does he want to correct the mistakes he made when he was president, or does he want another term in office to settle political scores? Does he want to come back to appease his ego after suffering a humiliating defeat in 2016? This article examines Mr. Mahama's motivations through the lens of Reverend Father Richard Rohr's famous book Falling Upward. Readers can make their own judgments about President Mahama's decision and whether that decision is born of selfishness, arrogance, vindictiveness, egotism or patriotism.

Mr. Mahama is on a quest for redemption to correct “past wrongs,” as he put it. But what is unclear is whose past wrongs he seeks to correct. Some people have suggested that he wants a second chance to correct his own mistakes in order to redeem the multitude of corruption scandals that tainted his administration. Others believe that he wants to use the presidency to settle political scores with his opponents. Either way, Mr. Mahama would be more credible if he were to specify the “past wrongs” he wants to correct– and how he seeks to correct them — as part of his campaign. Mr. Mahama would also enhance his credibility if he were to ask the Ghanaian people for their forgiveness for his own mistakes and, by the same token, forgive those who he thinks have wronged him. A quest for redemption, if it is genuine, implies the seeking of forgiveness. Perhaps President Mahama's quest is not for redemption after all, but rather a pretext for regaining power.

To appreciate Mr. Mahama's decision to run for president again, it is important to ask this question: Did he make public policy decisions for personal gain or was he trying to do what he thought was right at the time of making these decisions and inadvertently end up hurting Ghanaians? If the latter is the case, he must accept that even if his intentions were good, sometimes the complexities and practicalities of governance can have unintended outcomes.

On the other hand, if President Mahama made policy decisions purely for his selfish gain at the expense of Ghanaians, he can still redeem his honour and conscience without having to become president again. There is a right path to redemption. Mr. Mahama must identify and own his wrongdoings, apologize to Ghanaians and atone for his mistakes.

Now that President Mahama's 2020 campaign is in full gear, it is imperative to ask whether this decision serves himself or the national interest. Analysed from the perspective of Father Rohr's work, Mahama's decision is problematic because it is likely egocentric and ego-driven.

Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation. He is an author and a teacher. The message of his book Falling Upward is straightforward: life has two different halves. The first half is concerned with the success and enhancement of ego and its mind-set: ambition, competition, looking after oneself, one's family and group interest. The second half seems to be about undoing much of what has been accomplished in the first half in order to get at the deeper heart of human life. In the second half, “one has less and less need or interest in…making again those old rash judgments, holding on to old hurts, or feeling any need to punish other people. Your superiority complexes have gradually departed in all directions. You do not fight these things anymore; they have just shown themselves too many times to be useless, ego based, counterproductive, and often entirely wrong.”

Father Rohr goes on to suggest that countries whose leaders exhibit the characteristics and values of the first half of life tend to be engulfed in chaos, corruption and poverty. On the other hand, countries whose leaders have the qualities of the second half of life tend to be peaceful and democratic. Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and many others are examples of leaders who transition to the second half of life.

Now, considering Father Rohr's insights, is President Mahama's bid to be president again inspired by a first or second half of life mindset? It almost certainly exemplifies a first half of life mindset because it projects arrogance, selfishness, competition, judgment, vindictiveness and a sense of entitlement. By all accounts, President Mahama is a wealthy man and much of his wealth was acquired during his long public life. Therefore, he will likely secure the nomination of his party due to his unmatched resources, which will scuttle the presidential ambitions of his fellow party men such as Mr. Spio Garbrah, Goosie Tannoh, Alban Bagbin and others. Furthermore, with his financial muscle, he will also likely mount a credible and serious challenge to the ruling party in the 2020 election, thereby threatening Vice President Bawumia's presidential dreams too.

This state of play calls into question what a win for President Mahama, as either the presidential nominee of his party or president of Ghana, might mean. How much change beyond “redeeming” himself will it be? While it might be a political rebirth for President Mahama, will it benefit Ghana? This politics of redemption, of me again and “me alone”could prove antithetical to meaningful change, whether Mr. Mahama wins or loses the elections. A win for Mr. Mahama could embolden him to limit the political space and stifle the ability of new generation of leadership to flourish. It will also potentially deprive the country of the service of great minds like Vice President Bawumia who, apart from proving his competency and work ethic, has the unique ability to unite and bridge the religious divide in the country.

In conclusion, President Mahama's “me alone” politics does not bode well for Ghana's democracy. It may very well be legal for him to stand again, but is it ethical and does it serve the national interest? Ghanaians will have to make that determination for better or for worse come 2020.

GHANA: Minister Axed For ‘Make A Million’ Claim

 Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama fired his deputy communications minister after she was recorded saying that she would stay in politics only until she had made one million dollars.

ACCRA - (AFP) Ghana's president on Friday fired his deputy communications minister after she was recorded saying that she would stay in politics only until she had made one million dollars. 

Local media obtained a tape purported to be of Victoria Hammah criticising another deputy minister and saying she would “not quit politics until I make one million dollars”. 

The information ministry announced her dismissal without providing a reason and government spokesmen were not available to comment further. 

On Thursday, police in the capital Accra arrested Hammah's driver after she complained that he was recording her, said police spokesman Freeman Tetteh. 

“The minister believes he made the tape,” Tetteh said. Police released the driver, who is also her cousin, after concluding that he had not committed a crime. 

“There is no element of criminality in” recording, said Tetteh, but added: “We are still investigating.” 

The scandal came as President John Dramani Mahama tries to restore confidence in his stewardship of the country and its gold, cocoa and oil-producing economy after months of rising deficits and a credit rating downgrade. 

Fitch said last month that it had downgraded Ghana's debt rating to “B” from “B+” due to concerns over its rising deficit. 

The world's second-largest producer of cocoa and Africa's second-largest producer of gold, Ghana has experienced rapid economic growth in the years since oil production started in 2010. 

The country's economy grew a staggering 14 percent in 2011 and eight percent in 2012. 

But revenue from oil production, $541 million last year (400 million euros), was about half of what the government had originally been expecting from the sector. 

-----SAPA, AFP

BOOK REVIEW: My First Coup d'Etat, by Ghana's accidental president

BY SIMON ALLISON/DAILY MAVERICK

Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama

Very few leaders can meet the demanding challenges of both politics and prose. John Mahama, Ghana’s president, is one of them. SIMON ALLISON reviews his evocative memoirs, which should be required reading for anyone trying to understand where Ghana went wrong – and what Mahama might do about it.

I tried and failed to get even a glimpse of the exterior of Osu Castle, the president’s residence in Accra, Ghana. As I approached the building, I was stopped on its periphery by two burly guards who were happy to chat with me about world politics but weren’t going to allow me even a foot closer to the centre of power. Turns out I didn’t need their permission. If books are a window into the soul – and they surely are – John Dramani Mahama’s memoirs are a floor-to-ceiling glass pane, offering an unrivalled insight into the mind of the Ghanaian president.

This is an accident. Mahama wasn’t president when he wrote it, nor when it was published in July. At that time, he was deputy to John Atta Mills and expecting at least another term as backup. Then Mills died, without much warning, and Mahama was thrust into the global spotlight. He was swiftly confirmed as president and as party leader and will contest the elections at the end of this year, which are expected to be very tightly fought.

Outside of Ghana, not all that much is known about Mahama, except that he is a teacher turned career politician and a loyal member of the ruling party. His book, My First Coup d’État, fills in some of these gaps.

It is clearly aimed at an international audience. Some of the more laborious passages come when Mahama is filling in the basics of his country’s political history, or explaining terms and concepts that would be obvious to any Ghanaian. As foreigners, however, we need the explanations, and some of them form the basis for fascinating anecdotes in their own right. You know those large, square plastic bags that are ubiquitous across the continent? The colourful ones with the chequered patterns that can, if required, magically accommodate the contents of an entire household? In Nigeria, these are called “Ghana must go” bags, because that’s what Ghanaian refugees used to carry their things when they were unceremoniously booted out of Nigeria in the 1970s.

Mahama’s pain as he describes this incident is clear, especially given that many of these refugees still felt unable to return to Ghana. “Things had come to this,” he writes. “The feeling that life anywhere else, no matter how dangerous it was to get there or how difficult it was to live there, was better than life in Ghana, the home we had all once loved and cherished and had never before dreamt of leaving.”

Mahama was born just a year after Ghana achieved its independence in 1957, and his coming of age – as told in a series of loosely connected, almost fable-like stories – mirrors Ghana’s own development. In the good days, as Kwame Nkrumah is promising his African renaissance and Ghana is revelling in its new found freedom, Mahama is the most promising son of a wealthy minister, spending his time shuttling in a chauffeur-driven car between his elite boarding school and his various houses.

His family’s wealth and prosperity is relative, of course. “Only a few houses in town, the houses of affluent people were roofed with corrugated iron sheets. Ours was one of them.”

Things swiftly go downhill for Ghana and its future president. Nkrumah is overthrown and a seven-year-old Mahama, accompanied by a school matron, has to wander the streets of Accra looking for his father, who has been arrested. This is the first coup d’état referenced in the title, and it is followed in due course by a second and a third. Political instability and misguided leadership destroys Ghana’s promising economy and throws Mahama’s family into chaos, and as he grows up he is looking for other political models.

It’s the middle of the Cold War, and socialism is the most obvious alternative. There’s only one problem, as far as Mahama is concerned: how to reconcile his leftist leanings with his obviously bourgeois background and his father’s new career as an enormously wealthy rice producer?

In fact, Mahama’s father looms large in the narrative, much as it does in another presidential memoir: Barack Obama’s Dreams from my Father. Unlike Obama, Mahama doesn’t delve at all into his father’s failings, choosing instead to present him as a wise, gentle patriarch. This doesn’t always ring true. Questions left unanswered include how Mahama senior obtained a lucrative rice export licence during a notoriously corrupt period of Ghanaian history; why he couldn’t keep a marriage together; and what exactly persuaded him to give away one of his sons to a British couple.

This criticism aside, Mahama’s is an engaging, eloquent and very readable memoir. As a person, he has experienced many of the issues which have stunted African development for so long: coups, corruption, closed borders, xenophobia, economic stagnation and autocracy. He has lived through all this, and recognized the flaws in the system. On this evidence, it is hard to think he will make the same mistakes as a politician.