Ghana’s two main presidential contenders staged rival rallies in the capital, Accra, on Thursday evening, courting voters in a final push ahead of the world’s second biggest cocoa producer’s legislative and presidential election set for Saturday.
Former president John Dramani Mahama, leader of the main opposition National Democratic Congress party, told hundreds of supporters in the Madina neighbourhood that the election was a decisive moment for the nation, urging voters to “reset the country”.
“This election is not just another election. It’s a defining moment for our nation,” Mahama said.
Pre-election polls have tipped Mahama as the favourite to win. His campaign has leveraged Ghana’s worst economic crisis in a generation, framing Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, the flagbearer of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), as a perpetrator of the policies that led to the crisis.
A few kilometres away at the University of Ghana campus, Bawumia, a former central banker, addressed hundreds of supporters, touting Ghana’s emergence from the crisis, and said despite the challenges, the economy had performed better than when Mahama was president from 2012 to 2016.
“When you come to the macro economy, it’s like night and day. We’ve created more jobs than him,” he said, citing Ghana’s steady economic growth to cheering supporters clad in the party’s white, blue and red colours.
“We’ve kept the lights on,” he said in reference to Ghana’s power outages that rocked Mahama’s years. “On what basis does Mahama want to come back?”
Philip Doh, 69, a previous NPP supporter in 2016, told Reuters he would be backing Mahama this time, citing Ghana’s debt burden and the incumbent government’s failure to tackle corruption.
While Kofi Ayensu, 39, said he will vote back the ruling NPP after it implemented a free high school policy.