The 2020 Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Mahama, has reiterated his decision not to concede to President Akufo-Addo over what he described as a flawed 2020 elections.
Speaking at Techiman in the Bono Region, the former President said his refusal to concede is based on his principles towards democratic values, and that it is myopic the many interest groups preaching to him to the effect that concession would be in the interest of peace, reiterating that such a concession would amount to denying Ghana a teachable opportunity that forestalls a bad precedent.
“Many people have called on me to just let go in the interest of peace. But I keep telling them that if I do, we will miss the opportunity to learn the lessons that we must all learn for the benefit of our democracy,” the former President said in Twi.
He added again that, “It’s not just about me, more than six million people voted for me. Giving up means giving up on them.”
The former President is in the Bono Region to give his condolences to the families of victims of gun violence unleashed on unarmed civilians by alleged soldiers who had stormed a collation center at Techiman South and shot into a crowd of party supporters.
Two people died while a number of others sustained various degrees of injury in the controversial election which is widely perceived to have been rigged for President Akufo-Addo by the Electoral Commission.
President Mahama who said he was also to visit the family members of other victims at Wenchi said the sheer level of misconduct by the Electoral Commission would make it wrong for the NDC to concede.
“A lot of things went wrong and many people have called and said we should let it go in the interest of peace. However, if we don’t learn the lessons, we will repeat them. We in the NDC are peaceful people, we will not shoot or kill. All we want is the truth,” he said.
He pointed out that the NDC is not a neophyte in elections in Ghana pointing out that in 2000 when the party lost the election, it peacefully handed over power to the NPP. However, in the case of the NPP in 2008, when they lost power, they tried to cling on to power.
In 2012, when the NDC won power again, the NPP went to court to contest the NDC’s victory for eight whole months, and yet when the NDC lost power in 2016, it readily conceded.
Consequently, the NPP’s refusal to concede in 2020 is just in keeping with the party’s confrontational nature as bad losers.