Ghana’s presidential contest may be a packed field but it is delicately poised as a two-horse race between the incumbent Nana Akufo-Addo and his arch rival John Dramani Mahama.
Twelve candidates are vying for the highest office in Ghana including three women, prominent among them late former president Jerry John Rawlings’ widow Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings.
However, like four years ago when Akufo-Addo pipped then incumbent Mahama to the presidency, most political observers are tipping it to be a very tight race between the two perennial political foes.
Mahama’s National Democratic Congress whose founder Rawlings died last month are still smarting from that resounding election defeat which dumped the party to the political wilderness.
Four years on, the NDC and its presidential candidate Mahama look revitalized and energized for the December 7 poll onslaught
Ever since the campaign began, the presidential hopeful who turned 62 in November has been on the offensive, charging that Akufo-Addo’s government has not offered a better shot at addressing Ghana’s economic, social and political problems.
Instead the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has compounded them, according to the former secondary school teacher who as vice president replaced President John Atta Mills following the latter’s death in 2012.
Economists say Ghana’s domestic and foreign debt stood at $120 billion when Mahama was leaving office, but today it stands at more than $150 billion under Akufo-Addo.
For Mahama, the ruling NPP have offered little in the way of reducing Ghana’s debt, reining in corruption and improving on his NDC’s governance record while in office.
He says President Akufo-Addo’s commitment to good governance, stamping out graft and deepening accountability has not only been called into question.
“He has not only failed in fighting corruption, he has been at the centre of the corrupt and nepotistic activities of his government” Mahama adds.
“Corruption sits at the highest office in the nation” one of the NDC’s campaign videos claim.
Under his proposed Operation Sting, Mahama promises a free hand to state institutions charged with whistle-blowing corruption to pursue offenders who he says have enjoyed “festive impunity” under the NPP government.
According to him, the NPP government have distinguished themselves with graft notoriety with corrupt public sector workers, political appointees and their cronies being allowed the freedom to pillage and plunder public resources.
With the coronavirus witnessing something of a resurgence in Ghana, the NDC has not pulled away from using it as the tip of its offensive spear to proverbially shoot down the ruling NPP’s handling of the pandemic.
Currently over 51, 000 are carriers of the virus and 323 people have died from it since the pandemic caught up with Ghana in March 2020.
Like other countries in the region, Ghana has been struggling to contain the rapid spread of the respiratory illness but the NDC has capitalized on this situation to call out the NPP government’s supposed laxity in propping up the country’s healthcare system in the face of the threat posed by the pandemic.
On the other hand, the opposition NDC is offering what it calls a more robust alternative way of heading off the virus and protect Ghanaians from its deadly streak, convinced that the future can only belong to those who prepare for it today.
“A new NDC government will establish infectious disease units in all district hospitals and it will also construct two police hospitals in the middle and northern zones so that we can be ready for what may come next” it adds.
Flaunting a UNESCO award which Mahama won in 2015 in recognition of his government’s record in shoring up education, the NDC says it will “improve quality, expand access and eliminate double track in secondary education by building more schools”.
With the campaigning almost over, a sizeable section of Ghana’s over 17 million registered voters (two million up from the 2016 elections) will decide if these issues raised by the NDC are enough to facilitate Mahama’s desired comeback.
On December 7 Ghanaians are heading to the polls to elect a president and 275 members of parliament across the country’s 16 regions.
Although under the 1992 constitution, presidential poll outcomes are determined by a first-past-the-post simple majority vote, there is a provision for a second round if no candidate secures 50 percent plus ballot to win in the first round.
WN/as/APA