Boakye Agyarko
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) yesterday punched holes into the 2016 manifesto of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) launched in the Brong-Ahafo regional capital, Sunyani, over the weekend.
For the NPP, it is nothing worth banking hopes on and that it is full of grandiose promises to Ghanaians regarding what the NDC would do if re-elected.
At a press conference in Accra yesterday, Policy Advisor and Chairman of the NPP’s 2016 manifesto committee, Boakye Agyarko said after critically analyzing the NDC manifesto, one could only conclude that “the future under another Mahama term would indeed be bleak,” and that “from their own resource allocation for the next four years, the likely scenario is that we are not going to have any money to pay salaries next year.”
President Mahama said during the manifesto launch that “we still have more roads to construct, more houses to build, more food to produce, additional educational and health facilities to provide and most importantly, more jobs to create.”
Broken Promises
Mr Boakye Agyarko wondered why the president would take empty pride in his achievements for the past four years when incidents of broken promises, corruption, mismanagement of the economy and high unemployment were rife. For these, the NPP strong man noted, “John Mahama is a president who is so out-of-touch with the problems of the average Ghanaian that he sees his non-performance in these sectors as a success.”
Mr Agyarko focused his lenses on the four thematic areas around which the NDC manifesto was prepared in assessing the credibility of the president’s intentions, which are Putting People First, Building A Strong Economy For Job Creation, Expanding Infrastructure For Accelerated Development and Advancing Transparent and Accountable Governance.
Question Marks
On President Mahama and the NDC’s promise to ‘put people first’ as contained in their manifesto, the Policy Advisor had this to say, “In today’s Ghana, with so much suffering and hardship, nothing shows that John Mahama has put Ghanaians first.”
That, he said, was due to the fact that “after all today, they [Ghanaians] pay more for their electricity than their rent. They bear testimony to how four years of Dumsor has destroyed their small businesses; Ghana’s young people have lived the nightmare of searching for non-existent jobs, a situation that has led to nearly half of that population being jobless.”
For him therefore, “It cannot be disputed that President Mahama has made Ghanaians poorer.”
He said the evidence is that “the prices of everyday items have skyrocketed under John Mahama. The price of a gallon of petrol has gone from GH¢3 to GH¢16; bread has moved from GH¢2 to GH¢7; milk from GH¢1 to GH¢3; kenkey from 30 pesewas to GH¢2; fish from 50 pesewas to GH¢2; sachet water from 5 pesewas to 20 pesewas, and a bag of cement from GH¢12 to GH¢32.”
Even though President Mahama wants Ghanaians to believe that if re-elected, he would “ensure equitable development for all our citizens,” Agyarko, who managed the NPP’s campaign in 2012, insisted, “The reality, however, is starkly different. Even members of his own party realise that the President’s ‘Better Ghana Agenda’ has been for the benefit of only his family and friends.
Lies
On the NDC’s promise to ‘build a strong economy for job creation,’ Mr Agyarko quoted a portion of the NDC’s manifesto which claims, ‘The Youth Employment Agency is offering employment to over 100,000 youth,’ saying “This is a clever way to hide the fact that the Mahama government has not been able to hit even its modest target of creating 100,000 jobs by the end of this year.”
He referred to the Youth Enterprise Agency (YEA) which came to replace the GYEEDA, and said it has become a vehicle to loot over GH¢1 billion of taxpayers’ money.
“The NPP’s National Youth Employment Programme, which became GYEEDA under President Mills, was launched on October 3rd 2006. The pilot project which ushered it in had by this time employed nearly 33,000 youth in community education and agriculture. By the time the NPP left office on January 7, 2009, 110,000 young people were employed under the scheme. In under two years with the right policies in place, a positive change was made,” he revealed.
Comparing the two, he emphasized that “Immediately the NDC took office, they created a horde of unemployed youth by laying off all these 110,000 young people previously employed.”
He thus insisted, “What the NPP achieved in under two years, the NDC has been unable to achieve in 8 years; it is not surprising that their greatest achievement in this sector has been the creation of ingenious schemes to facilitate the stealing of over one billion Ghana cedis from the sector and the sharing of this loot amongst themselves and their cronies.”
Inflated Project Costs
Tackling the NDC’s promise to ‘expand infrastructure for accelerated development’ as captured in its manifesto, the NPP guru asked President Mahama and his government to let Ghanaians know what the NDC has got to show for the billions of dollars they borrowed in their (Ghanaians’) name.
The NPP believes Ghana could and would develop three times as fast, if Ghanaians get rid of President Mahama and the NDC this December because according to Agyarko, who is also a former vice president of the Bank of New York, “Today under Mahama, Ghana is spending $1.4 million per km to asphalt roads, against the African average of $600,000.”
He noted, “While, all this incompetence and corruption is going on, our neighbour Burkina Faso, which is drier than Ghana, through various irrigation schemes is growing big, juicy, delicious strawberries for export and processing strawberries into jam.”
Meanwhile, he noted that “Here in Ghana, we are subjected to leaders who know how to fly ‘akomfem’ to Burkina Faso, but do not believe the NPP can provide irrigation to help our poor farmers in the North through its ‘One Village: One Dam’ solution. For lack of vision, Ghanaians suffer!”
Corruption
On President Mahama’s promise to ‘advance transparent and accountable governance’ when re-elected, Mr Agyarko could not but ask rhetorically, “How can Ghanaians expect a vice president, John Mahama, who was investigated by his boss, President John Atta Mills, over allegations of corruption, be expected to have the moral authority and desire to fight corruption when he is now the boss?”
He again asked, “How can we expect a president who admits to accepting a $100,000 gift from a foreign contractor, who was awarded a government contract through the efforts of the president, to have the courage and desire to stop his ministers and other officials from dipping their hands into the state coffers? How can we expect a president who has spent four years to protect his friends who were found to have allegedly stolen public funds through instruments such as GYEEDA and SADA, to allow any case of corruption to be prosecuted?”
For him, “When it comes to corruption, President John Mahama sees no wrong, hears no wrong and speaks against no wrong. To him that is just the way it is.”
Need For Change
“We want Ghanaians to think about this: if this has been his attitude in his first full term as President, what then would his actions be if re-elected for his last and final term? What then would restrain President John Mahama and his family of corrupt cronies in his last term from pillaging the national coffers? Let us not make any mistake about it. John Mahama for another four years, unchecked by the threat of losing another presidential election, is an exceptionally frightening prospect.”
By Charles Takyi-Boadu