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General News of Friday, 4 January 2013

Source: Charles Addo

NPP ridicules state of the nation address

A New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament has launched a blistering attack against President John Mahama, describing his state of the nation address as “hollow” and one that lacks substance.

According to the Asanti Akim South lawmaker, the content of the address does not befit that of a national address, stressing that was a sign of incompetence.

Gifty Ohene Konadu added: “The address didn’t cover some key sectors; I was expecting to hear something about women and children, issues about their health, maternal health, education, and scholarship for students, I didn’t hear anything of that sort”.

Madam Konadu who could not fathom why the president chose to be brief in his address angrily retorted: “why did he come here if he will be giving us the details later? If that was the case then he [President Mahama] shouldn’t have wasted his time to come here at all. The president should know that once he is here, he should be prepared to give us all the details”.

On his part, the Communications Director for the NPP, Nana Akomea, said the address was pregnant with what he described as partisan utterances.

“State of the nation address should not be used to come and narrate partisan achievements because those once can be disputed, so he must be factual at all times. He [President Mahama] should rather be talking about what the nation was able to achieve and not the NDC.

“Some of these gimmicks take the beauty of the occasion away! He should talk about the successes the nation recorded and not the NDC”.

Nana Akomea opined that the president should have used the occasion to tell Ghanaians the state of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).