Ex-President Jerry John Rawlings has asked for an end to acrimonies generated by comments and counter-responses between the Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II and ex-President John Dramani Mahama.
Former President Rawlings took to social media on Monday to call the partisan banter between the two heavyweights “unwarranted and unnecessary.”
“There is enough tension, let’s cool off” Jerry Rawlings exclaimed.
“The Asantehene has made us proud with a highly educative address to the UN on the subject of PEACE. Comments by former President Mahama on an aspect of the address shouldn’t elicit or provoke edict sounding threats…,” the founder of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) wrote.
On Friday, September 13, 2019, the Asantehene told the United Nations General Assembly in Washington DC that John Mahama only conceded defeat in the 2016 Presidential elections to Nana Akufo Addo, the then Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) after a high-profile mediation between him and the two contenders.
However, in a quick response, ex-President Mahama stated unequivocally that he conceded defeat without the prompting of a special mediation as the Asante monarch claimed.
Setting the records straight, ex-President Mahama’s office admitted that he had indeed met with the Asantehene on three occasions and that this meetings were not directly to avert conflict over him refusing to accept defeat. The statement explained that the first was prior to the December 07 election in which the two frontline candidates promised to play fair and respect the will of the people.
“The other two meetings took place after the official declaration of the results of the elections, and to re-emphasise after President Mahama had publicly conceded and congratulated Nana Akufo-Addo. Those two meetings focused on matters arising out of the transition process. President Mahama made a commitment to the people of Ghana, never to be the one to subject them to the periods of unease, political instability and the doubts they experienced after the 2008 and 2012 elections. He remained true to that commitment and exemplified it after the 2016 elections,” the statement concludes.
This response has naturally raised issues of credibility of the accounts of the Asante monarch, a possibility that has angered many natives of the Ashanti Region who have warned ex-President Mahama to apologise for bringing the name of their king into disrepute.
A group calling itself the Asante Youth Association has condemned ex-president Mahama in what they described as attempts to use his ‘political gains’ to destroy the Asante Kingdom. They therefore declared the ex-president persona non grata in the Ashanti Region.