Akufo-Addo will run for 2020 – Hamid

President Nana Akufo-Addo will run for the 2020 presidential elections, God willing, if he is in good health and still alive at the time, Information Minister Mustapha Hamid has said.

“Insha Allah, he will be on the ballot paper in 2020 if he is alive and in good health; he will go,” Mr Hamid clarified on Wednesday, 19 July.

Mr Hamid’s clarification follows the president’s comment on Tuesday during his encounter with journalists at the Flagstaff House that there was no certainty that his name would be on the ballot paper for the 2020 presidential elections.

Speaking in connection with his first six months in office, the president said he had heard that illegal small-scale miners were threatening to vote against him in 2020 due to his onslaught on their operations, but added that nothing shows, as of now, that his name will be on the ballot paper in the next three years.

“I’ve been told there are young men who have said they voted for me and if I continue down this way they can be sure that they will not vote for me again in 2020. Well, the 2020 vote it’s not clear if Akufo-Addo’s name will be on the ballot in the first place and even if his name is on the ballot, this is not going to be the reason why I’ll stop, I’m going to continue,” he told journalists.

The president’s comment has led to speculation that he will be a voluntary one-term president.

However, his spokesperson, Mr Hamid, told Kwadwo Asare-Baffour Acheampong (KABA) in an interview that the president spoke the way he did because as a human being, he has no control over future events.

“People live and die by the minute, it happens every day, and, so, a president cannot come and stand before a whole country and beat his chest and say: ‘Yes, I’ll be on the ballot paper in 2020.’ If he did that, we the Muslims would wonder whether he is God. That’s why Muslims always prefix whatever they say with Insha Allah – God willing – so that is what he meant because it is too premature to be talking about 2020 when we don’t even know what will happen before that time,” Mr Hamid added.