President John Mahama
A little over a year of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) being at the throttles of state, Ghanaians are in an auspicious position to assess their performance.
Manifesto contents and the ability to implement the contents therein, especially the key elements, are considered when such assessment is made. That is not to say that governance quality is not a factor for such assessments anyway.
For the purposes of this leader, we shall stick to the 24-Hour Economy policy upon which the NDC campaign was hinged.
The 24-Hour Economy policy is the cornerstone of the NDC as the free Senior High School (SHS) is to their counterparts, the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Soon upon assumption of the political leadership of the country, the NPP started implementing the free SHS policy, surprising Ghanaians at the speed with which they went about it. There was no denying the fact that the party was prepared for the implementation of the policy, which they had dangled in front of Ghanaians as they sought their vote.
It is instructive to recall that while the policy was being presented to Ghanaians as doable, the NDC claimed it was not, describing it as a ruse by the NPP for electoral dividends. Time however proved the naysayers wrong when eventually it was rolled out.
Enter the NDC and their 24-Hour Economy policy, in spite of the passage of a legislation presenting it with the necessary impetus, it still requires explanation about its contents, especially the shift system of employment.
What Ghanaians, especially the youth who constitute a large chunk of the population, understand about it is that it is a game-changer for the unemployment conundrum in the country. The 1:3:3 job creating formula, the cornerstone of the policy, sounded musical in the ears of the youth. The provision of electricity at a reduced tariff for vulcanisers and other self-employed persons at night was too good not to convince Ghanaians to vote for the NDC.
Vote they did, as a sizeable number of the rival NPP supporters stayed away from the polling centres, incensed with their leadership.
Government, after the creation of a 24-Hour Economy Secretariat, has clearly ignored the critical segment of the policy, the 1:3:3 shift system.
This has not only been shunned, the Presidential Advisor on the policy, Goosie Tanoh, has said that nobody can compel the implementation of this key component of the policy.
This, he said, is dependent upon economic factors, adding that industries cannot be compelled to operate shift systems when the economic circumstances of their operations do not support that.
It is instructive here too that Goosie is playing back the point raised by the NPP when the party was critiquing the policy as unfeasible.
It is a policy dependent upon the interplay between demand and supply. Industry will even without such a policy implement a shift system to create more employment and boost their profit margins.
It is deceitful therefore that the NDC after campaigning upon a so-called shift system is now shifting the goalpost. This represents another deceit on the part of the ruling party.
It is obvious that at the time of the campaign with this policy, they knew it was not possible to use a presidential fiat to order banks and players in the economy to operate shifts.
With the 1:3:3 shift system effectively now discarded, we are all eyes to see how the other components will leave the drawing board for the field.