John Mahama
With 2024 around the corner, the country’s politics has reached a crescendo with all manner of information going to inundate the media space.
Some of the information would not deepen the frontiers of our democratic dispensation but meant to divide or polarise our country.
The ethnic zealots would adopt the path of tribal politics while the religious fanatics would prefer to knock the heads of Christians against Muslims. That would be the most unfortunate path to take, especially when Muslims and Christians have coexisted peacefully, enhancing Ghana as the oasis of peace in a troubled West African sub-region.
It appears the opposition NDC is not interested in politics of ideas but propaganda and lies.
That is why the NDC takes delight in comparing apples with oranges to make it difficult for ordinary citizens to determine the essence of the comparison. That is why immediately Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia was elected last Saturday as the flagbearer of the NPP, the Goebbelsian liars in the NDC set to work with a flyer on social media comparing the record of Dr. Bawumia to that of Mr. Mahama.
So you see the NDC comparing an apple with an orange. The question is, has Dr. Bawumia ever been President of the Republic unlike Mahama who was President from July 2012 to January 2017 during which his record was shambolic with almost five years of dumsor?
To compare apples with apples, let us compare the track records of the two gentlemen when they were Vice Presidents.
Ever since the Nana Akufo-Addo government decided to seek International Monetary Fund (IMF) support, the NDC has made the move seem satanic and like the worst economic intervention in the history of the country. But in 2015, Mahama went to the IMF for policy credibility, while Nana Akufo-Addo went for credit support in 2022.
The present government has justified its assistance from IMF because of COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine war. What was the NDC’s rationale for the IMF cover? But one can understand that truly the NDC left a “boneful” kitty after the 2012 general election by the IMF press statement offering Ghana support in 2015.
Take and read part of the statement that said, “After two decades of strong and broadly inclusive growth, large fiscal and external imbalances in recent years have led to a growth slowdown and are putting Ghana’s medium-term prospects at risk. Public debt has risen at an unsustainable pace and the external position has weakened considerably. The government has embarked on a fiscal consolidation path since 2013, but policy slippages, exogenous shocks, and rising interest costs have undermined these efforts. Acute electricity shortages are also constraining economic activity…”
And the NDC beats its chest as better managers of the economy? President Akufo-Addo said in 2020 in the heat of COVID-19 that he would not sacrifice human lives for the economy because he cannot bring human beings back to life but he can fix a collapsed economy.
Even beneficiaries of the NPP’s pragmatic policies to save human lives include the bitterest critics of the government. These include members of academia such as Professors Ransford Gyampo, Gatsi and Bokpin, who received their full salaries and other benefits while the universities were closed.
Have they ever asked how government got money to pay workers and provide other support at the time the ports were closed and no government revenue was generated from such critical revenue centres?
We think that the hypocrisy is just beyond human comprehension. The NDC is so desperate for power to the extent that they will throw dust into the eyes of the people in order to have their way.
We can assure them and their allies in media, academia and civil society that they would fail in this clandestine agenda to inflict their incompetence again on the people of Ghana to superintend the debilitating dumsor on the country.
The debate as to who is a better manager of the economy; NPP or NDC would be interesting and explosive. The faint-hearted would not be able to stand it because facts and evidence would defeat lies and propaganda.