The New Patriotic Party, after studying the
highlights of the ruling party's manifesto, has accused the President of the
Republic of being empty on ideas to develop Ghana.Instead, the President
“steals ideas from his political opponents only to be found wanting when it
comes to implementing them,” the party said in a statement.
The NPP has
further said President Mahama and his National Democratic Congress have no
intention to deliver on their manifesto promises if Ghanaians make the mistake
of re-electing them for 12 straight years this December.
Addressing a
press conference in Accra on Wednesday, 14 September, the Communications
Director of the party, Nana Akomea, said the NDC “steal our policies and cannot
implement them. They even steal the title of our manifesto. So they have no deep
attachment to the principles necessary to drive the promises they give. To them
politics is all about ways and means. Nothing to do with actually making lives
better.”
According to Nana Akomea, President Mahama, in putting together
his 2016 manifesto, chose to either steal ideas from the NPP or simply repeat
promises first given in NDC’s 2008 and 2012 manifestos, which he failed to
implement when he had the mandate to do just that.
Nana Akomea mentioned
some few examples in what the NPP described as its initial comments on the NDC
manifesto.
Below is how the NPP summed up the party’s concerns about the
president’s “serious trust deficit”:
• For example, Nana Akufo-Addo is
promising to trigger the constitutional process to create new regions when
elected in 2016
• President Mahama now says he is also planning to
trigger a similar process to create new regions.
• Nana Akufo-Addo
promises to have District/Municipal Chief Executives elected.
• President
Mahama also promises to elect DCEs. This is after the NDC in 2011 issued a white
paper against the recommendation of the Constitution Review Commission to have
DCEs/MCEs elected if re-elected this December.
• NPP promises to create
new geographical development authorities to oversee the deliberate development
of every inhabited corner of the country.
• President Mahama yesterday
gave the same promise.
• In March 2016, Akufo-Addo announced to the
Chiefs and people of Suma Ahenkro, in Jaman North, Brong-Ahafo Region, that as
part of his plans to transform cashew farming into a major cash crop and export
earner for Ghana, he will establish a Cashew Marketing Board to regulate the
industry and provide ready-market just as it is done for cocoa.
• Last
night, President Mahama stole from Akufo-Addo yet again, saying, “We will
establish a cashew board with its headquarters in the Brong Ahafo
Region."
• NPP was implementing ‘One Child One Lap Top’ by 2008, a policy
spearheaded by the late Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, President Kufuor’s Finance
Minister.
• President Mahama is today promising to also give away one
tablet one child after the NDC killed that scheme in 2009, only to make it seem
like a new idea and a new promise today.
• The NPP had a Deputy Minister
of Education in Charge of Technical Education - Kwame Ampofo Twumasi was Deputy
Minister of Education, Youth & Sports in charge of Technical Education in
2008.
• The NDC elected to abandon it in 2009, only for President Mahama
to re-introduce it now as a new idea he wishes to implement if
re-elected.
• NPP promises to implement in 2017 the National ID cards
which President Mahama has totally abandoned since he took office.
•
President Mahama, after listening to Dr Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia last Thursday,
now promises to do the same if re-elected.
• If re-elected, the President
has repeated his 2008 promise given at the kNUST Energy Forum that an NDC
government will provide "energy security" in Ghana before 2012. Yesterday he
repeated, “we will have off-takers for excess electricity” produced here in
Ghana. He again made this promise in 2012 that Ghana would be exporting power if
elected, only to hit Ghana with the longest power crisis on record.
•
After watching many potential investors in our petroleum industry leave the
country, President Mahama says he wants Ghana to become “the petroleum hub of
West Africa.
• In its 2012 Manifesto, the NPP promised to make the
Western Region “the hub of the oil & gas industry” in West Africa. Earlier,
on several platforms, including a speech delivered in Houston, Texas, in
February 2012, Nana Akufo-Addo said, the NPP was, looking at how Houston had
successfully managed their petroleum industry through "the diversification and
industrialisation of a state that used to be dependent on cotton. It is this
model of the integrated petrochemical industry that we seek to build in Ghana,
servicing the entire oil-rich West African."
• President Mahama says it
is his intention that "Ghana will have the best road network in West Africa by
2021”. Now, we all know what the President means when he describes a road as
best, don’t we? Just last June he described the Dodo-Pepesu-Nkwanta Road he was
commissioning in these terms: “… If you take a look at the quality of the road,
you can only admire the good work done. I don’t think that there is any other
road in Ghana that is more pleasant to the eye than this one… I also want to
take the opportunity to thank Messrs Oumaru Kanazoe Construction Limited of
Burkina Faso for the very high quality of work they have dine on this stretch of
road. As I have said, this is one of the best quality roads in Ghana today, and
I will urge the Minister of Roads & Highways to bring other contractors to
come and see so that they can emulate it in other parts of the country”
•
In the same month, just two weeks after the road was commissioned, the Nkwanta
South DCE, Alfred Kofi Wukanye, took the media on a tour to see for themselves
the potholes that had developed on the 26 million Euro road done by the man who
confessed to bribing the President with an American car
• In the words of
one commentator, I K Gyasi, the President “poured fulsome and unstinted praise
on the contractors, Messrs Umarou Kanazoe Constructuon Limited of Burkina Faso,
and his bosom friend, Mr Jibril Kanazoe, the owner of the company, the same
person who, out of eternal gratitude for [winning contracts in Ghana], returned
favours by buying a 2010 Ford Expedition vehicle for President Mahama”
•
The President says if Ghanaians make the mistake to re-elect him in 83 days’
time, it will mark “the beginning of new glory days of the railway sector.”
Thankfully, he has given us a taste of what would happen to the billions of
dollars of railway cash if Ghanaians make the mistake to give him another term.
The GHS3.5 million money that was fraudulently used for that corrupt
bus-branding deal, was cash meant for the railway sector
• He says he
will “expand the investment under SADA to construct more irrigation facilities.”
Recalling how some $200 million of SADA money flew away illegally to irrigate
corrupt private pockets, what the President actually means to say is that he
will give away more money through corruption in the false name of the people in
the North. If he has failed to prosecute one single person for the hundreds of
millions of dollars stolen from the people of the North through SADA then why
would throwing more money at it deter any corrupt person from doing the same
thing?
• The President says the IMF programme he forced Ghana through
“will be the last.” We must remind him that NPP successfully weaned Ghana off
the IMF in 2007 and
• He says he is laying the same foundation he told
Ghanaians he had laid in 2012. What stops him from promising another foundation
in 2020 just to be consistent? “The 2016 NDC Manifesto is also noted for
repeating failed promises. The NDC in 2008 promised to create full employment.
Instead, what they did was to build a strong foundation for creating massive
unemployment. NYEP left NDC 110,000 employed. Today, its replacement after the
scandalously corrupt GYEEDA, YES, admits now has less than 70,000 young people
employed,” Nana Akomea said.
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