Akufo-Addo’s investiture
Former President John Dramani Mahama and the largest opposition party, National Democratic Congress (NDC), on Thursday, 7 January 2020, boycotted the investiture of President Nana Akufo-Addo.
Nana Akufo-Addo was sworn in to begin his second term at a ceremony before Parliament in Accra on Thursday.
Heads of states and representatives from Africa and the world over were present to witness the ceremony but conspicuously missing was ex-president John Mahama, who is challenging the legitimacy of the 2020 election, which saw Nana Akufo-Addo emerge winner, in court.
Apart from Mr Mahama, the NDC parliamentarians and party executives were also not present.
A similar boycott was staged by the current President when he was the opposition leader together with the NPP Members of Parliament in 2013, when they also challenged the 2012 election results which they lost in court.
Meanwhile, Mr Akufo-Addo says he was elected legitimately in a free, fair election.
In the last State of the Nation Address (SoNA) of his first term, President Akufo-Addo told Parliament on Tuesday, 5 May 2020, that: “I am thankful to the Ghanaian people and to the Almighty that I have been given a clear mandate to govern the country for four more years, and, thereby, given the opportunity to complete tasks, consolidate some of the far-reaching measures we have introduced, and initiate further changes and adjustments to policies and practices”.
“The Constitution demands that we go to the people after four years to ask for a mandate, and we must listen to the voice of the people. I said during the election campaign, and it is my firm and passionate view, that I should only be President in a fairly conducted election, which I believe, in all sincerity, the election of 7th December was”, he noted.
“I recognise that my main opponent in the election, former President John Mahama, has gone to the Supreme Court to seek its intervention, and grant reliefs that, he believes, were compromised in the conduct of the elections. It is good for the nation that, in the end, he chose the legal path, instead of the pockets of violence that have attended the rejection of the results by his party in the period after the elections. We all have to make a deliberate decision to invest in the rule of law and uphold the integrity of the institutions of state, so that no person or group of persons take the law into their own hands with impunity”.