Acting New Patriotic Party (NPP) national chairman Freddie Blay has replied President John Mahama, who described his recent press conference as insignificant.

“I’ve had my say, and don’t intend to respond to that press conference,” Mahama told NDC supporters at the Jubilee Park, Thursday.

“I said in Accra that when a hunter heads to the bush to go and shoot an elephant, he doesn’t make time to stand and shoot at any rabbit that passes along. The press conference is a rabbit press conference. I won’t have time for rabbits because I am going to shoot an elephant,” Mahama added.

Below is Blay’s response:

Thursday, November, 19, 2015, was a sad day in our nation’s history. On that day, the Ghanaian people saw a most unbecoming sight: the President of the Republic, John Dramani Mahama, launched a tirade of insults, abuse and attacks on the leadership and membership of the New Patriotic Party, without any justification.

One would have hoped that President Mahama, whilst campaigning in the Volta Region, would have done his possible best to shed off the incompetency tag Ghanaians have come to associate him with, and rather show to Ghanaians his so-called “impressive” track record in office.

But, No! He chose to use the platform to insult the NPP, in the forlorn hope that the NPP will respond in a disproportionate manner, and thereby enable him to run away from his abysmal record of governance in office.

We are sorry to disappoint you, President Mahama. We will not descend into the gutter with you, where you are comfortably, but strangely, languishing in of late.

From all indications, it is evident that President Mahama prefers to concentrate his attention on the NPP, as opposed to telling Ghanaians what he and his NDC government have used the GH¢200 billion in revenues, from taxes, loans, export receipts, etc., over the last 7 years for. President Mahama, clearly, is disappointed and sad that the focus of Ghanaians is no longer on the NDC-induced internal happenings in the NPP, but, rather, on his incompetence and the spectacular failure of his NDC government in running the affairs of the nation since 2009.

Unlike the government President Mahama is currently presiding over, ours in the New Patriotic Party is one that believes in the rule of law. We are governed by our constitution, and we will not, for a second, shield anyone who abuses our constitution and brings the name of our party into disrepute, regardless of their position in the party. The NPP, unlike President Mahama, will not provide a safe haven, at the seat of Government, for corrupt officials who have gleefully looted the coffers of the state.

Under President Mahama’s watch, we have a government that has abandoned the teachings of the Public Procurement Act and made sole sourcing of contracts the norm, not the exception, as the Act mandates. The wanton abuse of the law has brought in its wake a corresponding massive increase in corruption.

Under President Mahama’s watch, the resources of the state have been subjected to a system of “create, loot and share.” We have seen bodies like GYEEDA and SADA, which were ostensibly set up to stimulate growth and to provide jobs for young people, become vehicles of corruption.

Our message to Mr. President is simple: We will not allow you to joke your way out of your incompetence. We, in the NPP, will not allow your government to run away from the broken promises, the widespread corruption, rising levels of unemployment, high cost of living, worsening conditions of living of Ghanaians, erratic supply of power (dumsor), hopelessness and despair you have plunged this nation into. We will not engage in a war-of-words with you. However, we will not shirk our responsibility of exposing you and your incompetence, and the theft of scarce public resources by yourself, and members of your administration.

The NPP will continue to remind Ghanaians about President Mahama’s several promises, made in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015, to banish dumsor forever only for him to incompetently turn around and tell us, again, that ‘dumsor’ will end in 2016. We will not relent in reminding Ghanaians about the future of indebtedness; the future of hopelessness; and the wretched future being needlessly created by a reckless government under the leadership of the incompetent President Mahama.

Lest we forget, we want to tell President Mahama to check his mathematics, because he has, once again, incompetently exposed his lack of knowledge of the subject. We want to tell him that GH¢9.5 billion, representing the total public debt stock left by President Kufuor, out of GH¢94.5 billion, which is Ghana’s total debt stock, expressed as a percentage can in no way be 41%, as he stated in Ho.

Surely, a live rabbit is better than a dead goat.

……signed…… Freddie Blay Acting Chairman, NPP