A Bold Civic Commentary; a ruthless narrative to name and shame the madness controlling the levers of power in our republic
By J. A. Sarbah
I’m enraged. And every Ghanaian with a conscience – and a pulse – should be too.
In just six months, John Mahama has confirmed the nation’s worst fears — that his second coming was never about redemption, but revenge. He didn’t return to fix a broken system — he came back to finish capturing it.
He wore the mask of reform to win votes, but beneath it lay the same greed, same lies, same deceit, and same appetite for unearned power. Ghanaians gave him a second chance, and he’s responded by launching the most dangerous assault yet on Ghana’s fragile democracy.
This isn’t failure. This is betrayal – a cold demolition of institutions, justice, and public trust; all in service of a man whose only real loyalty is to the elite circle that feeds off Ghanaians sufferings.
Mahama is not leading a government — he is presiding over a well-oiled criminal enterprise. His style of governance is steeped in deception and fear tactics reminiscent of military junta days: suppress dissent, corrupt institutions, and reward loyalists. Like the darkest days of our past, he now governs through fear, favours, and falsity.
What insults my intelligence most is his saintly pretense – and his staged flirtation with the so-called men of God who are even worse, given how shamelessly they feed off the poor!
Ghana is not in a democratic renewal — we are in a full-blown democratic collapse. And John Mahama is the chief architect.
Mahama’s presidency hasn’t just torn the moral fabric of public leadership, but has broken the spine of justice, gagged the media, and turned parliament into a marketplace of dirty deals. At this point, we must ask: Can this style of democracy, ever work for the ordinary Ghanaian?
The signs are everywhere. Just take two events that occurred on the same day (Tuesday, July 22, 2025) — events that tell a bigger story than any campaign promise ever could.
First, the Supreme Court gave a technical reprieve to Kelvin Taylor — a paid Mahama loudspeaker who’s built a career peddling untruths, inciting division, and dragging the names of decent Ghanaians including judges through the mud. That ruling wasn’t legal brilliance. It was an escape hatch — proof that when Mahama’s hatchet men are in trouble, the rules bend; pure and simple.
That same day, the Attorney-General entered a nolle prosequi in the Unibank trial, effectively freeing Dr. Kwabena Duffuor and seven others implicated in one of the worst collapses of our financial sector. Why? Because they refunded a mere 60% of the stolen funds?
Is that what justice is now — partial refunds for the rich and maximum prison term for the poor for far less offence?
What about the thousands of jobs lost? The broken lives? The irreversible economic trauma caused by Unibank’s collapse? Mahama’s government just threw all that away. No full trial, no accountability, just a quiet exit for his political patron.
And why is Mahama so fixated on breaking the judiciary’s back? Why the desperate bid to reduce Ghana’s last guardrail of justice into a pawn of his power scheme? A judiciary captured to serve one man’s ambitions is a national tragedy. It’s subversion. It is treason against the Republic. If Mahama believes he can bend the courts to his will and still call this democracy, then he is walking a dangerous path — one that history never forgives.
This is not the rule of law. It’s elite exoneration — a two-tiered justice system where political cronies get protected and the ordinary citizen gets punished.
And make no mistake: this is by design.
This is no accident.
The Mahama administration isn’t stumbling; it is executing. Systematically. Cynically. Clinically. It is consolidating power, silencing dissent, and rewriting the rules of engagement in this republic. The constitution is now a doormat. Institutions have become echo chambers. And that one – parliament? A house of deals, not ideas.
The media has grown timid. Civil society groups whisper in private what they used to shout in public. And the youth — that vibrant, restless force, now watch helplessly as their future is traded on the altar of elite compromise. But do you blame the youth for inaction? No.They’ve long been brainwashed through calculated indoctrination and paid civic ignorance!
This isn’t just a Mahama problem. It is a national emergency. Ghana’s democratic soul is bleeding and too many people are pretending not to see it.
We cannot continue lying to ourselves. This isn’t the change voters were promised. It’s a calculated regression — a return to the politics of impunity, intimidation, and institutional collapse.
Ghana doesn’t just need a new president in the next election. Ghana needs a reckoning. We need to ask ourselves: how did we allow one man to lie his way back to power and then use that power to dismantle the very system that empowered him?
This is no longer politics. It’s about survival. If we continue on this path, we won’t just lose another election. We’ll lose the republic itself.
J. A. Sarbah | PP Firebrand | Voice of National Conscience
