Because of the economic, social and political conditions facing the country, there is a perception that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration under Nana Akufo-Addo has failed to meet the expectations of Ghanaians. On this verdict, I personally think the jury is still out, as posterity will be the best judge of the current administration.
Even though no president or political party has been able to fulfil all promises in a manifesto, because of the underlying polarisation of the country’s politics, President Akufo-Addo has been attacked and portrayed as perhaps the worst president the country has ever had.
The logical consequence of this attack on the President is that Mahama – a sitting President who was voted out of office for almost similar reasons – has now been elevated to a saint-like status in the eyes of the electorate. Without a doubt, Mahama and circuitously, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), have been emboldened by the sense of nostalgia Ghanaians appear to feel for their return to power.
The controversy that preceded the just-passed E-Levy has become emblematic of both the deepening polarisation of our politics and the voting public’s increasing obsession with politicians fulfilling the promises they make in their manifestos in the country’s governance.
Riding on the crest of the anti-E-Levy sentiment wave in the country, former President Mahama is alleged to have told workers on workers’ day that the E-Levy would be abolished if the NDC was voted back into power in 2024.
Whether this alleged “promise” is legally feasible or not, is a matter for the legal Eagles to wrestle with. But, what I know for a fact from my “O” Level Economics, is the fact that every government, regardless of which ideology it professes, needs to raise taxes for its development agenda.
Mahama’s promise to abrogate the E-Levy can only mean one of two things: Either he wants power at all costs, or he does not really understand Ghanaians’ apparent negative sentiment about the E-Levy.
If the threat to scrap the E-Levy by former President Mahama was made to endear himself to Ghanaians for the sake of winning power at all costs, then he is making a fundamental mistake of promising Ghanaians what he cannot deliver in his remaining one term in office (if he is elected at all).
It is significant to note that Ghanaians’ antipathy towards E-Levy is not because of the fact that they do not know the importance of taxation. In fact, taxation is as old as any human organisation, and indeed, in the pre-colonial traditional state, taxation existed in the form of tributes paid by conquered territories and peoples or by communal labour from the subjects of a sovereign state.
Conversely, the problem Ghanaians seem to have with E-Levy is a problem of a trust deficit, as far as government’s management of the public purse is concerned. The narrative here is that if the nearly GH¢300 billion borrowed by the government is not visible, they cannot trust it to use a mere GH¢6 billion from the E-Levy to do anything meaningful in the remaining three years left.
In fact, the Supreme Court’s admonition to the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to keep records of the E-Levy proceeds is one way of restoring the public’s trust in the government, with regard to the management of the proceeds from that tax.
In other words, the court is telling Ghanaians that revenue from this tax should be monitored so that they are used for their intended purposes rather than falling through the cracks of corruption, as is often the case with the public purse in the developing world.
Truth be told, Ghana is broke right now as I write this piece. Technically, the country is bankrupt, however, as Fitch and Oppenheimer observed of the country in the 1960s under similar circumstances, “…but you cannot liquidate a country”.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has just listed Ghana among the 20 sub-Saharan African countries that are at high risk of debt burden. According to the IMF, this situation is further exacerbated by the fact that this debt crunch comes “at a time when the social and development needs are very large”.
As a country, we cannot perpetually borrow our way to prosperity, so it is not enough for anybody – certainly not a former President – to say that they will abolish E-Levy for the sake of attaining power; the discourse should be about how to think outside the box to not only mobilise revenue domestically, but manage it prudently.
It is significant to note that while Akufo-Addo’s administration coincidentally has been the poster boy for the “investigative” role of social media in exposing dishonesty and insincerity in our governance, we must not rest on our laurels thinking that this role is limited to the dynamics of this particular administration.
With the exception of those with an obvious partisan agenda, social media will continue to proliferate and open the “Pandora’s box” in our governance going forward, regardless of who is in government. We must, therefore, be careful about what we wish for in the lead up to the 2024 electioneering campaigns.
In fact, under our present socioeconomic circumstances, domestically mobilised revenue like the E-Levy cannot be sacrificed on the altar of attaining raw political power. So let us be circumspect in what we promise Ghanaians as the 2024 election cycle approaches. Thus, the alleged threat of cancellation of the E-Levy by former President John Mahama is an example of an unrealistic promise that should be taken with a pinch of salt.
The writer is a Sociologist based in the US.
BY Prof Acheampong Yaw Amoateng