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General News of Friday, 9 September 2005

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JAK and his government are desperate -CJA

The CJA local officers in Takoradi describes President Kufuor?s recent tour to the central and western regions as a sign of frustration because he has not been able to fulfill promises he made to Ghanaians.

The Takoradi Local Officers of the Community for Joint Action (CJA), organizers of the ?Wahala? demonstrations have observed that the recent visit by the president to the central and western regions was a sign of a frustrated president desperately trying to cover the unfulfilled promises he made to Ghanaians.

They are therefore not surprised that the president reportedly referred to the ?wahala? demonstrations as ?bansa? and asked the organizers and the participants to instead go into farming, which is even an insult to farmers since their occupation was a noble one.

In a press statement released by the local officers and signed by Paa Duku-Quarshie, Godwill Abakah and Fiifi Sangari, the CJA local organizers noted that such a derogatory remark by the president would discourage the youth from taking farming as an occupation since the president was trying to create an impression that farming was meant for school dropouts.

According to the statement, it was no wonder that the agriculture sector of the economy continued to receive lip-service attention by the NPP government and mentioned the recent importation of fresh tomatoes from Burkina Faso during the dry season and the inability of the government to increase tariff on imported rice and poultry products to justify their claim.

According to the statement, the president had no moral basis for describing the Wahala demonstrations as ? banza? because if one was to take into account the role the president and his party played during the ?Kume-Preko and the Yabre demonstrations,? one could easily describe the NPP government as frustrated and disillusioned.

The statement further noted that the people of Sekondi-Takoradi were surprised that the president could not visit the Railway Location in Sekondi, which it described as a ?graveyard? and also his failure to explain the reason behind the collapse of the Eastern railway line despite the creation of the whole ministry for the sector.

The CJA local officers noted also that the ?Wahala? demonstrations had helped the president and his government to shape their policies towards pricing of petroleum products, though the president might not acknowledge that in public.