HYPOCRISY! BY ABENA OSEGU BOATENG

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This thing called hypocrisy cannot hide because it is always brazen. Indeed, what can be more brazen than what the army of zealots of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) are doing today. They are jumping unto every and any platform to condemn John Dramani Mahama for saying that the 2024 elections will be a “Do or Die” affair.

Some have gone to the extent of calling on the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to drop him as its presidential candidate for the 2024 elections because his declaration would cost them votes. Others have called on Mahama to take back his words and apologise for them.

Short memory be what?

These loud mouth NPP Zombies have so soon forgotten that only about six years ago, they were very busy defending the ‘All Die Be Die’ mantra of President Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo. They said then that the mantra represented steadfastness and a determination to ensure that the 2016 elections was free and fair.

The context of the statements by Mahama and Akufo-Addo is most important in their evaluation. Akufo-Addo told a rally of party faithfuls that “Some people believe that Akans are cowards but what had happened at Atiwa (where NDC supporters were brutalized and their properties were destroyed) shows that we are not cowards. No man has three balls. We all have two balls….”

The reference to Atiwa and balls is the clearest indication that what Nana Akufo-Addo said was a call to violence and his reference to Akans is also unmistakably ethnocentric.

Mahama on the other hand said “It is said that you learn lessons from things that happen, so we have learned from 2020. The elections will be won or lost at the polling station. The polling station will be a do or die affair. I haven’t said all die be die, it will be do or die at the polling station, in 2024 that is where we will win the election. We will be doing everything to ensure that the election is free and fair. We don’t want to cheat the NPP and we also don’t want them to cheat us. We just want the will of the people to prevail.”

What can be wrong with this statement? It is certainly not a call to violence and it cannot be incitement of ethnic hatred.

The strange thing is that people who have been boasting about their expertise in slapping their political opponents and those who have threatened to beat up journalists have all joined the fray in condemning Mahama. Even those who have been justifying the establishment of NPP vigilante groups and their recent violent actions have found their voices and are lambasting John Dramani Mahami.

What a world full of hypocrisy?