Vice-President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia
The penchant of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for ‘copying’ ideas of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has been mocked by Vice-President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia in a speech at Bulinga in the Wa East District of the Upper West Region.
Highlighting the latest instances of manifesto-content ‘stealing’ by the opposition party, Dr. Bawumia derided the practice pointing at the recently launched manifesto of the NDC, which has largely been critiqued to contain many entries of the ruling NPP’s launched earlier.
The NDC had to postpone its manifesto launch on several occasions until last Monday evening, a development which many thought was to give room for the plagiarisation which is being lampooned heavily.
Prominent among the ‘stolen entries’ were the NPP’s non-guarantor loans for tertiary students, model senior high schools in the Zongos across the country, building of sports and recreation centres in the regions, among others.
There was no stopping for the Vice-President who was on fire as he recalled some instances of the opposition party’s stealing of his party’s ideas.
The 2008 NPP idea of a Northern Development Authority, he said, was one of the stolen ideas which under the NDC government took the garb of Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA).
“They copied our idea and changed it to SADA thinking it was all about flying guinea fowls to Burkina Faso,” Dr. Bawumia said and attracted an unbridled bout of laughter.
To crown it all, he told his political opponents that when it comes to performance by the ruling party they cannot replicate it.
He put it thus, “You can copy our ideas but you can’t copy our performance,” he said, adding “in terms of performance, the record is very clear; a record of good economic management versus incompetence. You cannot copy our performance.”
By A.R. Gomda