I won't continue vicious cycle of revenge - Mahama pledges

Former President John Mahama has said he is not seeking power to avenge members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) who may have been hard done by the Akufo-Addo government.

According to him, Ghana cannot continue to perpetuate a vicious cycle of vengeance on opponents anytime the pendulum swings to the other side.

“I was privileged to serve under Prof Mills and if you remember, Prof Mills was said to run a father-for-all government. He was a father of all Ghanaians and he treated Ghanaians equally”, Mr Mahama recalled in an interview with Woezor TV.

“When we came into office, we were not vindictive”, he noted.

“Even though we knew people who did not share the same political views as us, they were able to continue to do their work without any intimidation or being driven out of office”.

“Unfortunately, that has not been the case of this government”, he bemoaned.

“Many people have lost their jobs just based on political victimisation. People’s banks have been closed just because of not having the right political colour. People’s businesses have been collapsed just because they don’t belong to the right political party”, he listed.

He nonetheless said vengeance was the right way to build a nation.

“And you realise that it’s created a certain extremism in our political party engagement. And, so, I hear our own people, NDC, saying: ‘Oh, what they’ve done to us, when we come, we, too, we shall revenge.”

“But what kind of nation will we build if we have this vicious cycle of government changing and seeking vengeance against each other?” the flag bearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) who is currently touring Kete Krachi asked.

“And, so, I’ll say that we’re all Ghanaians; let’s open the opportunities of this country to all Ghanaians”, he noted.

Mr Maham believes “we cannot develop with half a nation”.

The two major political parties, the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the biggest opposition NDC, he noted, “have almost the same numbers, and, so, if every electoral cycle, you have only half the people wanting the government to succeed, half wishing the government to fail and then it turns around and it’s the same, then this country is really not going anywhere”.