This particular election will be a downright escapade. There will be a maximum therapy and heed to every spoonful episode of it. It will be like amazonian supermodels being flaunted for glitterati. Ghana is due to attain a new president after December’s election. The incumbent vice-president, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, and an erstwhile head of state, John Mahama, are the two leading candidates in contention to win the poll. Nana Akufo-Addo, first elected in 2016, is coming to the cessation of his second and ultimate four-year term. Out of a population of roughly 35 million (2024 est.), 18,774,159 are registered to vote in the upcoming December 7 election.
Historically, voter turnout in Ghana’s elections has been high, with a turnout of 79% recorded in the December 2020 general election. For the 2024 election, the country has been partitioned into 276 single-member constituencies, each of which is further cleaved into discrete polling stations, where voting takes place in-person on election day in the country’s ninth general election since multiparty politics was reintroduced in the early 1990s, at 40,975 polling stations across the country, including 328 special voting centres.
In the last 30 years, the country has had a myriad of practically fought but amicable polls. Ghana has a reputation for the punctiliously transfer of power between administrations. Although, 12 hopefuls are vying for the presidency, only two have a feasible prospect of winning. Since the return of multiparty politics in 1992, only candidates from either the New Patriotic Party (NPP) or the National Democratic Congress (NDC) have triumphed. The two aces are:
* Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia (NPP) – having served as Akufo-Addo’s vice-president for eight years, the 61-year-old Oxford-educated economist could make history as the country’s maiden Muslim president. The former deputy governor of the central bank acquired an odour for his financial dexterity. He has maximized and intensified his efforts as the Veep, even though we confronted the fiercest catastrophies which exacerbated the world’s economy, to sustain and ameliorate Ghana’s economy in order to make it more auspicious.
* John Mahama (NDC) – clinching this ballot would convey a comeback for the 65-year-old as he has secured the presidency already for four-and-a-half years from 2012 but then lost historically woefully in the 2016 election. In office, he was styled “Mr Dumsor”, which was a citation of the power erraticity which dogged him during his presidential regime. Amidst the economic calamities it boiled over during his term, Mahama is still brazen and callous to tussle for the presidency yet again, with the facetious projection that, he will claim it back.
Since 1992, Ghana has had several titanic presidential elections. In 2008, less than half a percentage point segregated the two candidates in the second round.
Of the last eight general elections, three (2000, 2008, 2016) emanated a party turnover in government and two (2012, 2020) gave climb to a presidential election petition before the Supreme Court, which was settled, in each case, in favour of the originally professed victor. In all instances, transfer of power has been soothing and structured. Coupled with the fact that, the constitution’s two-term demarcation on presidential tenure savours both popular and cross-party prop and has been honoured routinely without argy – bargy, this tradition of placid transfer of power underscores the country’s reputation as a democratic avatar in the West Africa and across Africa.
Literally, this election is between a man of present and futuristic ideas, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and a man of anachronistic and dark predilections, John Mahama. Although, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is yet to usher himself into the position of the presidency, but notwithstanding that, his fingerprints as the Veep of this country have been immensely conspicuously palpable. The policies and programmes he has birthed are nothing but aesthetically fashioned, such that, they have warranted diasporic panegyrics : the foregone US Vice President, H. E. Kamala Harris touted the positive impacts of Ghana’s drone medical delivery service, other African countries came to Ghana to understudy how Ghana rolled out its flagship Identity Card (Ghana Card).
Dr. Bawumia doesn’t victimize the menial works, it is for this rationale of why, under his signature he has established edifice to house the ‘ Kayayei ‘ workers. On top of that, Dr. Bawumia has given the ‘ Kayayei ‘ workers the professional leeway by elevating them of being drivers for the newly – operationalized electronic buses together with females also. This must give the image that, gender polarities, classism, apartheid and ableism are his tapu practices _ while creation of jobs for the youth is his sine qua non.
On the other hand, it is apparent that, John Mahama is the same ‘ John ‘ we knew some years back – nothing pregnantly has changed about him. Probably, the only adjustment, we have seen about him is his penchant for engaging into propaganda masturbations and his failed endeavor to gammon the bookish and farsighted Ghanaians. John Mahama’s policies proposed are ludicrously amorphic and mundane _ not addling that, John Mahama has turned up to say that, his pants and naff 24 – hour economy draft isn’t ” voluntary “. If he had the intrepidity to opine that, a government policy isn’t voluntary, then where lies that propitious policy aimed to garnish the country, since the 24 – hour economy is his flagship policy going into this election. I hope you have reckoned now as to why I have earmarked John Mahama as the ‘ paragon of diffidence of intelligence ‘ ? It was under the tenure of John Mahama as the president, where we had the ugliest association labelled ” Association of Unemployment Graduates “.
In fact, it will be sacrilegious and imprecatory should we welcome back John Mahama as the subsequent president. He has nothing consequential and telling to offer the country, principally the youth – his sole objective is to come and rive us into ineluctable tedium and doldrum. Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is our manifestable panacea and with his ” digitalization ” calendar, Ghana will, in two shakes, have a quantum leap in its economic framework.
By : Prof. Dinkum.
(The Buzzing Rapine of Erudition)
E – mail : dinkumchoice@gmail.com
