The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Northern Region, has described as misplaced President John Dramani Mahama’s plea to western leaders not to force democracy on Africa.
Addressing a session of the UN General Assembly, President Mahama said, “Democracy is not a one size fits all system, different countries are at different stages of the democratic journey. Democracy evolves and cannot be forced on the people.”
But a statement from the Northern Regional Secretariat of the opposition NPP, has interpreted the comment to mean that, western leaders should not meddle in the upcoming December 7 polls in case he [Mahama], loses and refuses to hand over power to the next elected President.
The Northern Regional Secretary, Sule Salifu in a Citi News interview, condemned the President’s comment and maintained that it amounted to an act of apprehension.
“President Mahama is simply by this statement saying that when there is any dispute in the 2016 elections, the western world should not come in and he knows what happened to Laurent Gbagbo and he does not want that to happen to him.”
“So we are sending a clear message to the President that we are not going to allow anybody to take the mandate of the people by force. If the western world does not intervene when there is dispute after the elections, the NPP will gunner the needed support to defend the ballot to ensure that the right person is elected and Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo will be sworn in as the next President of the Republic of Ghana.”
He stressed, “That statement is unfortunate and in fact, the Northern Regional secretariat of the NPP will describe that statement as a Coup statement.”
“We know that President Mahama was elected through a democratic process and he should be the first gentleman to rather call on the western world to deepen democracy in Africa.”
Sule Salifu emphasized that, “We are not taking his statement lightly because this is a President who is contesting with our flagbearer and we have made categorical statements that the NDC is conniving and condoning with the EC to rig the elections.”
Sule Salifu tasked the foreign missions and their allied bodies in Ghana to ignore President Mahama’s comment and keenly monitor all the electoral processes leading to the 2016 polls.
“Now if the President is saying that the western world should not impose democracy on Africa what it simply means is that he is equally asking development partners in Ghana such as the USAID to leave this country or not to even support the budgetary allocations to the Electoral Commission which they have been doing since 1992.”
Mahama not ready to hand over power
He also chastised President Mahama for ceremoniously wearing military regalia saying, “of late the behavior of the President seems to suggest that he is not ready to hand over power.
“Now this is a man who is of late been using military uniform all over the place and recently he announced that he has increased and introduced some new allowances to the Ghana Armed Forces.”
“All these things are preparations towards not handing over power and the President should not deceive himself because the will of the people will certainly speak for itself on December 7.”
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By: Abdul Karim Naatogmah/citifmonline.com/Ghana