The flagbearer of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) John Dramani Mahama has criticised Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia in his first public response to the flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP)’s recent media encounter.

Mr. Mahama has accused Dr. Bawumia of attempting to distance himself from government's track record, which the NDC flagbearer labelled as “abysmal.”

Speaking to supporters during his Greater Accra regional campaign tour, with stops in Bonikope, Sege, and Kasseh, Mahama, the flagbearer of the NDC, took issue with what he called a deliberate attempt by Dr. Bawumia and the NPP to distract Ghanaians from the NDC's manifesto launch.

“We [NDC] announced that we were going to launch our manifesto on the 24th of August,” Mr. Mahama remarked. “Immediately our [NPP] opponents announced that they were going to do a media encounter on the 25th of August, the very next day. You know, the intention for doing that media encounter, the next day after we had announced our manifesto, was to turn the attention of Ghanaians from the NDC manifesto.”

Mr. Mahama did not hold back in his assessment of Dr. Bawumia’s performance during the media event, suggesting the Vice-President struggled to defend his government’s achievements.

“But you see, when you do something with dubious intention, it backfires on you. You know how to tell when somebody is lying? If you have people who are smooth talkers, who can speak ‘ratatatata’ like a machine gun, the time when they become stammerers and they start stammering, you know they are lying. Somebody who can speak ‘tatatata’ like an AK 47 [rifle] suddenly, media encounter, eerrrm errrrmm,” Mr. Mahama noted.

He also criticised the Energy Minister, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, known as NAPO, who accompanied Dr. Bawumia during the media session. Speaking in Ga, he said: “The one following him too [NAPO] was also sleeping.”

The former president expressed surprise at what he described as Bawumia’s attempts to disassociate himself from the performance of the administration he serves.

“This is the first time I'm seeing a Vice-President running away from his President's track record,” Mr. Mahama said, calling it highly unusual for a Vice-President to distance himself from his own government’s responsibilities.