Politics of Tuesday, 15 October 2019

Source: Senyalah Castro

Ghana did better under John Dramani Mahama - NDC secretary

John Dramani Mahama, former President of Ghana John Dramani Mahama, former President of Ghana

Dr. Selanwiah Abdul-Mumin, the Navrongo central constituency secretary for the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), has described as abysmal the performance of the current administration in bringing the much-needed development to Ghanaians.

According to him, the Akufo-Addo-led administration has failed to come up with feasible ideas and the implementation of policies that will bring an improvement in the lives of Ghanaians and sectors of the country.

He said unlike the leadership of former President John Dramani Mahama who added tremendously to the growth process of the country, Ghanaians were yet to see any meaningful project undertaken by the Akufo-Addo-led administration since they came to power.

He said the leadership of John Dramani Mahama and the NDC, while in power, made huge investments in infrastructure to address the deficit in education, health, agriculture, road and aviation.

In a statement he issued on Sunday, the party scribe described the current state of the country as “pathetic” and needing the right hands (NDC) to cart her (Ghana) the path of development.

The statement also attributed the poor economic figures of the country to the incompetence of the hands handling Ghana’s affairs and questioned why Ghana with its endowment in many natural resources is still borrowing to manage the economy.

The secretary in the statement also mocked the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for its inability to deliver its “plethora of promises” made to Ghanaians prior to the general elections in 2016.

On the Free-SHS policy, the statement assured Ghanaians the preparedness of the NDC toabolish the Double-Track system and to identify and solve the implementation challenges of the policy and expand infrastructure to increase student intake at the various schools, when the party returns to power.

The statement also accuses government of taking money from “some people” to introduce the Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) into our educational curriculum, stressing that government aims to “systematically teaching our children from the KG level to comprehend and to accept homosexuality in our society”.

Read the full statement from Dr. Selanwiah Abdul-Mumin Below:

THE LYING PRESIDENT.

Ghana is a country of great opportunities consisting of vast natural resources and rich human talent, but caught in the grip of a warped dictator.

It is rather pathetic that our dear nation somehow finds itself at this material moment being led by a President who believes as long as he has been able to lie his way to the Jubilee House, same lies can continue to keep him in government.

Prior to the 2016 General Elections, the NPP party led by Nana Akufo-Addo and Dr. Bawumia who has respectfully earned the unenviable accolade of “the lying one” premised their campaign on a litany of lies and some plethora of promises.

Then Candidate Akufo-Addo equally bragged that he was going to transform Ghana into a first class country in his first 18 months in office as President of the Republic of Ghana. He continued the bragging spree through the double-tongued Dr. Bawumia, that his government is not going to borrow to manage the country’s economy. The country’s debt stock as at September, 2016 was then Ghc 112.2 billion.

With John Mahama as President, Ghanaians were given the state-of-the-art University of Ghana Hospital, the Tamale Regional Hospital was aggressively upgraded to a modern Teaching Hospital, the Upper East Regional hospital, Upper West Regional hospital, CHIPS compounds dotted across the country,
Kwame Nkrumah Circle interchange which is the biggest interchange in West Africa, the all-new Kumasi Kejetia market, the ultramodern Kotoka International Airport Terminal 3, unprecedented educational infrastructure in the form of the Community Day Schools project and other social infrastructure and policies that are meant to better the lives of Ghanaians.

Still, under President Mahama, we got the Komenda Sugar Factory and other hitherto dormant factories back in operation, MPS/GPHA expansion project, Eastern corridor roads, the University in the Eastern Region among others.

Under this current dispensation spearheaded by the bankrupt and clueless Akufo-Addo and his lying Veep, by the end of July 2019, Ghana’s debt stock was hovering around Ghc 205.5 billion. This was contained in the September Bank of Ghana Summary of Financial and Economic Data. This puts the country’s Debt-to-GDP ratio at 59.5 percent. Ghc107 billion of the debt was accrued from loans taken from outside the country. Domestic debts work out to be Ghc 98.5 billion. This means the NPP government under Akufo-Addo has astronomically increased the debt stock of this country by a whopping Ghc 93.3 billion in two and a half years. This translates to the fact that every Ghanaian owes about Ghc 6,850.

The average exchange rate in 2016 stood at Ghc 3.95 to USD 1. The current rate is at Ghc 5.43 to USD 1. When Dr. Bawumia` was confronted with his own logic that, the current fundamentals are weak, he eccentrically misrepresented his own popular rhetoric of “if the fundamentals are week, the exchange rate will expose you” in a warped and preposterous manner that “if the exchange rate is higher does not directly translate to weak fundamentals”.

In 2016, Ghanaians were treated to a host of mouth-watering promises from “King Promise” ranging from one village one dam, one district one factory, and one constituency one million dollars every year among others. It is an unimpeachable fact that not even one of such numerous promises has been redeemed by this government. Their much-touted Free Senior High School which has suddenly become the solution to all our problems in the country was desperately implemented to seek political glorification and aggrandizement, is now beset with serious implementation challenges. There is no shred of doubt that our people would opt for a better implementation strategy that will inculcate quality in order to fully achieve the intended benefits of real Free Senior High School.

Having failed in their rushed attempt to implement the Free SHS programme for purposes of political grandstanding, the next government which will be formed in 2021 by the capable John Dramani Mahama will solve the implementation challenges identified with the Free Senior High School, continue with our infrastructure drive to increase the infrastructural capacity of senior high schools, abolish the double-track system and expand capacity to accommodate the high numbers that will graduate from the senior high level.

What excites the Akufo-Addo government rather is to introduce into our educational curriculum, the satanic Comprehensive Sexuality Education that is aimed at systematically teaching our children from the KG level to comprehend and to accept homosexuality in our society. When the venerable citizens resisted this demonic policy, the Education Minister together with the first gentleman of the land resorted to lying. You can lie to some of the people sometimes, but you cannot lie to them all the time. There is evidence that monies have been taken to ensure that the resistance of our people is overcome, hence the program was launched in February with a strong and committed promise to roll it out in September. A meeting was subsequently held with religious leaders to throw dust into their eyes, whilst manuals have been printed and teachers trained to help implement the devilish, unpopular CSE policy.

In the face of heightened public outrage and resistance, the Minister of Education asserted to the public that cabinet had approved it. The voices of the masses have been clear and loud, and the political repercussions could be sensed ahead of the 2020 elections. Instead of the government to apologize and withdraw the unpopular satanic policy, government as usual with its shenanigans rather proceeded on a lying spree that the whole CSE thing has never been part of their plans, claiming cabinet never approved it. Does that mean the Minister of Education has been lying all along? And where from the training manuals? What about the trainers of trainers who are actually talking defensively and justifying the whole policy? What a dishonest and a lying President we have at our time!

Signed

Dr. Selanwiah S. Abdul-Mumin(NDC Constituency Secretary, Navrongo Central).