Atta Mills Responds to Kufuor

PRESS CONFERENCE BY PROFESSOR JOHN EVANS ATTA-MILLS ON ATTACKS ON THE NDC BY PRESIDENT KUFUOR AND OTHER MATTERS, MONDAY 29 JANUARY 2007

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Media,

Thank you for responding to my invitation to attend this press conference. First of all, I want to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the NDC delegates and members who were at Legon for electing me as the party’s Presidential candidate for the 2008 elections. I wish to assure the entire nation that I will wage a relentless campaign but devoid of any insults or names calling. Mine will be a campaign based on issues and what the NDC will do to better the lot of Ghanaians when elected to power in 2008.

I take this opportunity also to congratulate and thank you, the noble men and women of the media, for your very fair reportage of what took place at the NDC Congress and hope that it will be the beginning of a new relationship between the party and members of the media.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Media, Very soon we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ghana attaining independence – an event that marked the first step in what has been a chequered history. A momentous event of this kind must bring all Ghanaians together in a celebration of hope and unity.

One irony is that it is the successors of the Busia-Danquah tradition who opposed the ‘Motion of Destiny’ moved by Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah in 1956 to pave the way for our Independence who are today the political leaders of Ghana. It shows how far we have travelled as a nation.

And so I had wished President Kufuor was sincere when in his New Year address to the nation he described the Golden Jubilee as an opportunity to demonstrate our unity as a nation, going on to say that we should find in our hearts to engage in positive thoughts that recognize the value in each one of us and which encourage us to be each others keeper.

Fine words, but did President Kufuor really mean the words he spoke? Apparently, he did not.

Because in Koforidua, a few days after his New Year broadcast, the President told his Ministers, District Chief Executives and other appointees something quite the opposite -- that they must know on which side their bread is buttered when it comes to giving jobs and awarding contracts. The full meaning of the President’s directive became evident when it emerged a week later that a considerable number of stalls constructed for hawkers at the Accra Hawkers Market have been earmarked as ‘protocol allocation’, obviously for the benefit of NPP hirelings.

Many well meaning Ghanaians found the President’s open endorsement of cronyism, favouritism, political patronage and the corruption it engenders in Koforidua very troubling. But it hardly came as a surprise to me knowing that zero tolerance for corruption had long been pronounced dead by the NPP government.

The President has a sacred obligation to all Ghanaians irrespective of their political colouring. But his statements in Koforidua during the NPP conference shows that he does not think in the direction of progress that unity brings.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the media, I am greatly troubled by statements of President Kufuor seeking to denigrate the efforts and contributions of previous governments especially the NDC administration under former President Rawlings and of which I was the Vice President. Distorting the truth about our history does not promote a sense of nationhood and does not strengthen national cohesion.

I now proceed to respond to some of such statements, especially those he made at the recent Sunyani public forum. And at the end of my presentation, members of the media will be given a set of six Appendices containing figures and tabulated facts to buttress the points I will be making. I will at this point only summarise the contents of the Appendices as follows:

• Appendix 1 is an extract from the NPP’s own Budget of 2001 in which they detail out the project loans that the NDC Government contracted in 2000 and that was available for the NPP Government to use.

• Appendix 2 is an extract from the NPP’s 2004 Campaign document, “So Far, So Very Good”, showing the projects that the NPP Government executed with the NDC-contracted loans.

• Appendix 3 is an extract from the Government of Ghana Presentation to the Consultative Group of Donors Meeting held in Accra in 1999. It shows the donor funds that the NDC had secured and mobilised for specific trunk roads.

• Appendix 4 shows NPP Government deficits as percentages of GDP from 2001 to 2007. It is extracted from the Annual Budget Statements of the NPP Government and shows that the Government has run a budget deficit every year since it came into office.

• Appendix 5 is a summary of corruption allegations made by NPP members and personalities against President Kufuor and NPP members and personalities.

• Appendix 6 is a tabulation of one NPP Minister’s property acquisitions within 4 years of becoming Minister. It is information provided in the Minister’s Assets Declaration Form lodged with the Auditor-General and produced upon subpoena before the Cape Coast High Court. It was published in ‘The Chronicle’ of December 11, 2006.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press,

I will start with the President’s claim that the NPP Government inherited empty coffers from the NDC.

On domestic revenue generation, Government through the power of taxation collects monies from Ghanaian taxpayers which, together with the loans that the Government contracts, grants from our foreign benefactors as well as returns from the utilisation of state assets, are used to pay for our expenditures. The expenditures include the salaries of civil servants, teachers, nurses and doctors, payments to contractors and suppliers and repayment of loans that Government may have taken and which are due for payment. The main organizations that collect these taxes are the CEPS, IRS and the VAT Service. They collect these taxes on a daily basis. Therefore, everyday, by the close of day, there is something in Government coffers even if it is not enough to cover all expenditure. Any talk about “empty Government coffers” is therefore quite pedestrian.

In any case, at the end of January 2001, the very first month that President Kufuor assumed office, all public and civil servants were duly paid. Some contractors were also paid. That was the very month in which President Kufuor and his Ministers started the very expensive renovations to his residence, the State Hose, the Castle and to the ministerial and other official bungalows. If the Government inherited empty coffers, where did the NPP Government get the money from to cover all that expenditure?

Perhaps what President Kufuor means to say in a more sophisticated sense is that at the time the NPP assumed office, Ghana owed more than its available revenue.

If that is the issue, let me offer this simple explanation. Since the time of President Nkrumah, the national budget has always shown a deficit. Let me use the NPP Government itself as the example. Since the party came into power, the Minister of Finance in his annual Budgets announces that outflows exceed inflows or that expenditures exceed revenues. What that means is that like the NDC Government before it, the NPP Government has always run a budget deficit. There is never a year when there is a surplus sitting somewhere in an account and President Kufuor must know this.

So, whether by way of cash-on-hand or loans, the coffers were not empty. If his statement is in reference to deficit financing, then the NPP Government itself will stand accused of leaving empty coffers behind.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Media, Let me next turn to another oft-repeated allegation by President Kufuor that the NDC Government left a mess behind. What mess, I ask?

In the urban road sector, the PNDC and NDC Governments reconstructed the entire Kumasi city roads, Sekondi-Takoradi city roads and Accra city roads. In Accra, these included the six-lane dual carriage road leading to the four-lane dual carriage road from the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange to the Independence Avenue. Were these parts of the mess we left behind?

In the Highway sector, the NDC Government constructed the Kumasi-Sunyani asphalt road; the Kintampo-Tamale-Bolgatanga-Paga Faso asphalt road; and the double surfacing bitumen Bibiani-Awaso-Sefwi Wiawso road. Were all these part of the mess we left behind?

In the energy sector, the PNDC and NDC Governments extended electricity to all the regional capitals, including Tamale, Bolgatanga and Wa, to all the then 110 district capitals, and to over 1,000 settlements country-wide. The NDC Government constructed the 500 megawatt Aboadze Thermal Plant to augment the hydro power from Akosombo and the “Osagyefo Barge” for additional power generation, all to augment the national energy supply base. The NDC Government worked with the Governments of Nigeria, Benin and Togo on the West Africa Gas Pipeline, which the NPP Government is today claiming credit for. Are all these parts of the mess that we left behind?

In education, the NDC Government established the University of Development Studies and upgraded the Winneba Advanced Teacher Training College into a full-fledged public University of Education, Winneba, thus adding two new public Universities to the three that had existed since independence. In addition, we introduced the policy of allowing the establishment of private tertiary institutions, including Universities, to supplement the public sector Universities. We also implemented our policy of one region, one Polytechnic, such that today, every region in Ghana has one Polytechnic. The NDC made sure that every district had at least two senior secondary schools. Are all these parts of the mess that the NDC left behind?

In the health sector, the NDC Government constructed the modern regional hospitals at Cape Coast, Ho and Sunyani. Numerous modern district hospitals were constructed in the district capitals all over the country. Potable water was provided for so many communities that at the time we were leaving office, guinea worm infestation had virtually been eradicated from Ghana. Were all these parts of the mess we left behind?

Take the housing sector. Is President Kufuor telling Ghanaians that the sprawling housing estates at Adenta, Sakumono, Lashibi, and on the Spintex Road all in Accra and the SSNIT Estates all over the country constructed during the era of the NDC are all parts of the mess that the NDC left behind?

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Media, I have taken these few sectors and these few examples and drawn your attention to them as examples of NDC achievements that you can see with your own eyes. And when President Kufuor and his Government tell the people of Ghana that the NDC left a mess behind, are they telling Ghanaians to disbelieve the evidence before their very eyes?

By the way if I may ask President Kufuor: was the smooth, historic transfer of power from the NDC to the NPP part of the mess? Are the District Assemblies’ Common Fund, the GetFund, the Road Fund, the EDIF and the Energy Fund all part of that mess? What about Ghana’s huge reputation in international peace keeping, coupled with our ability to get the illustrious son of Ghana, Kofi Annan, elected as the Secretary-General of the United Nations, all of which achievements we bequeathed to the NPP government – were all these parts of the mess that we left behind?

I do not begrudge the President for seeking greatness, but he should not do so at the expense of truth.

In Sunyani, the President also stated that at the time he took office, the Nigerian government had stopped supplying crude oil to Ghana. That is incorrect. Ghana was still lifting crude oil from Nigeria at the time we were leaving office. As then Vice-President, I was personally involved in negotiating a new deal which following our exit from office became embroiled in the infamous NPP Sahara Oil scandal.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Media, A few words on corruption. At the Sunyani Peoples’ Assembly, President Kufuor repeated his swan song that anyone who has evidence of corruption against any NPP appointee must present it for action to be taken.

I hope somebody would advise President Kufuor to stop belittling the profession to which he belongs by insisting on evidence before investigation. Every first year Law student knows that you investigate an allegation to gather evidence for prosecution; not the other way round. If you already have the evidence, then there is no need for investigation. You go to trial.

The President has made it obvious that he does not have what it takes to deal with corruption in his own backyard. When Atta Mills is sworn in as President of Ghana in 2009, I will show the world how a clean and courageous President can deal with corruption.

I know the attitude of the Kufuor Administration is to go after former NDC functionaries whenever we raise the issue of corruption in the NPP government. And the familiar charge is wilfully causing financial loss to the state, not corruption.

I want to ask President Kufuor whether he and his Government have not wilfully caused much more financial loss to the state with the abandonment of the Quality Grain Project at Aveyime after the Government took it over in 2001. Joy FM recently carried a news feature on how the very viable project is now virtually dead. It painted a vivid picture of how the NPP, in pursuing their “everything NDC did was bad” agenda, have killed the dreams and aspirations of thousands of Ghanaians, especially rice growers.

I take this opportunity to commend Joy FM for an excellent work done in letting the whole country know how a very viable project which would have provided jobs for thousands of Ghanaians and would have saved the country valuable foreign exchange that could be used for other purposes has been killed to serve vested interests of rice importers.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Media, On March 6, 2007 Ghanaians will celebrate the Golden Jubilee alright. But beyond that the question we need to ask is what does the future hold. After almost 7 years of the NPP administration Ghanaians are more anxious and more uncertain about the country we love.

They have seen poverty on the increase, school fees rising, drug trafficking of unprecedented magnitude, rising crime wave, scandal and corruption in the government, power cuts, water shortages, widening gap between rich and poor and many more.

Everywhere Ghanaians are talking of the need for a new direction.

Ghanaians everywhere want a leader who will speak to their hopes for a better future and act on them.

Ghanaians want a leader who will match the rule of law with passion for justice and fairness to all.

And in addition to the rule of law, Ghanaians want to see the rule of reason in national affairs.

Ghanaians need a President who will move this country beyond partisan politics so that we can focus on bigger issues with a consensus driven agenda. Ghanaians need a new beginning in the politics of their country.

These are the qualities I will bring to the Presidency in January 2009.

I will restore truth and trust between the government and people.

And I want to make sure Ghanaians eat, and eat well for less. So food production will be number one on my priority list.

Ladies and gentlemen of the media, I have shared my views on the golden jubilee celebration with you. I have sought to set the records straight as far as the previous NDC administration was concerned. And I have given you an idea of the issues that will define my campaign. I hope you will convey the message to the Ghanaian public so that they will know help is on its way.

You did a yeoman’s job covering our recent congress which elected me as the party’s flag bearer. I would like to thank you most sincerely for contributing to its success.

I intend to work closely with you, and will keep my doors open to you at all times.

All I ask of you is fairness and objectivity. Criticize us but please, speak the truth.

Thank you all for coming.