Mahama’s Insult Of Buying Votes With Our Own Money Must Be Resisted

President John Dramani Mahama supervised an unprecedented and the most mind-boggling wanton dissipation of the nation’s resources in his desperate bid to win the 2012 presidential election.

The last three months to the 2012 election therefore witnessed an unusually shocking disbursement of state funds under very bizarre circumstances, using phantom schemes and companies that sprung up overnight, for the purposes of vote buying.

A chunk of the money was disbursed in November from the Ministry of Finance for unbudgeted expenditure, including payments to rlg for distribution of laptops embossed with President Mahama’s campaign pictures. The other organisations that were used for this unprecedented vote-buying spree included LESDEP, SADA, NADMO, Zoomlion and GYEEDA.

The reckless manner in which huge sums of monies were siphoned through GYEEDA has been confirmed by revelations from the ongoing sittings of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament.

For us at the Daily Statesman, it comes as no surprise that GYEEDA in 2012 ended up spending close GHC200million, even though it had budgeted to spend only GHC20 million.

In seeking to justify that reckless and obvious criminal dissipation of state funds, a deputy minister of Finance, Ato Forson, says the ministry released monies for the unbudgeted spending to prevent incurring judgment debts.

Interestingly, the payments that accounted for the reckless spending went to four companies: Zeera Group, Asontagba Cottage Industries, Better Ghana Management Services and Craft Pro. Others included allowances to some NYEP beneficiaries.

These companies were merely used as conduits to siphon state funds for the electioneering campaign for President Mahama.

That was why the monies eventually ended up in the coffers of the National Democratic Congress to execute the vote buying scheme.

In the Volta Region, parts of Central, Western, Brong-Ahafo and the three northern regions, over GHC80m was allegedly spent directly to buy votes.

In the Upper West, voters were said to have been given GHC50 as they stood in the queue to vote. In the Volta Region, especially some places in the Ketu South and North Dayi constituencies, as much as GHC100 per head was paid.

The overall strategy was to target households and between GHC200-600 was paid per household, an amount which seemed like manna from heaven for many poor families.

Truck load of motorbikes, bicycles, outboard motors, sewing machines, rice, cloth, laptops and phones followed NDC campaign vehicles as the governing party invaded communities in target areas buying votes.

Ghana is now facing serious economic crisis, with the economy virtually broke and leaving the Mahama government with no money to effectively carry out the responsibility it owes the nation. This is the direct result of that reckless 2012 spending, engineered by President Mahama to advance his political cause.

And after wrecking national coffers beyond repairs, and having failed to put in place measures to remedy the situation, President Mahama and the NDC have again given the clearest indication that they intend to employ the same dubious means in their desperate bid to perpetuate their regime.

And one of the obvious organizations being used is the Youth Employment Agency, which is said to be almost 70 per cent through to hitting its employment target of 100,000, in a period of eight years, even though about 110,000 youth who were in employment at the time the NPP was leaving office were all sacked.

One would have thought that President Mahama and his NDC, knowing the economic crises they have plunged the country into, would take a cue from the evil they perpetrated against the nation in the 2012 electioneering period.

But, as clueless as they are, they would want to stay in government and impose more hardship on Ghanaians after 8 years of incompetence.

That is why they once again want to use YEA and other agencies as conduit to advance their vote-buying scheme in 2016. All they know is how to ‘win’ elections and not about the good of the nation.

Ghanaians must rise up to the occasion, this time around, and indicate clearly to the corrupt President Mahama and his cabal of ‘greedy bastards’ that our votes are precious, and therefore can’t be bought with their own resources. That is pure insult! It must be resisted by all!!