The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has described as “distasteful” comments recently made by former president John Dramani Mahama to the effect that the 2024 elections will be a do-or-die affair.

General Secretary of the NPP John Boadu said the “perpetual” flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is only desperate to return to power.

Mr Boadu was addressing journalists in Accra on Friday, September 10 over the controversial comments.

“It is a distasteful comment that does not belong in our fast-maturing electoral democracy,” he emphasized.

After the controversy generated by the comments, which many ascribe violence to, Mr Mahama justified his utterance and said it was only a mere idiomatic expression.

For that matter, he shrugged off calls for him to retract the statements.

“In English, we have idiomatic expressions. Those who dropped out of school do not understand idiomatic expressions,” he told Sunyani-based Moonlite FM on Wednesday, September 8.

“‘Do or die’ means a critical assignment you have and you must do the needful or perish. And so you must do the needful,” he stated in English, changing tongue to Twi by saying: “I meant NDC must not wait to go to the Supreme Court again. What we must do at the polling station and collation center must be done!”

But the NPP said: “We know that John Mahama stubbornly refuses to retract. Rather he is seeking refuge in semantics and grammar. He is struggling to explain the impossibility.

“However, we are not surprised. Being in opposition and desperate to come back to power, John Mahama must be panicking at the pace at which the Akufo-Addo government is moving.”