President is hostile to NDC -Minoriity

Some Minority Members of Parliament on Thursday said President John Agyekum Kufuor's second message on the state of the nation was hostile to the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and did not sound reconciliatory enough.

They were reacting to the address in an interview with the Ghana News Agency saying: "Now that the nation is geared towards reconciliation the President's address should be historically and economically balanced and to praise where praise is due. It sounded as if for 20 years the nation achieved nothing."

Mr Kosi Kedem, NDC - Hohoe South said, "the opening section of the address was full of attack on the NDC government. It wasn't reconciliatory. The President created the impression that the NDC did nothing good during its rule". Mr Kedem said it was surprising that the NPP had now found it necessary to repackage Adult Education, which the NDC was much criticised for practising.

"The NPP then in opposition had persistently called for the scrapping of the non-formal education policy and vehemently criticised the then government of going in for a World Bank loan to implement the programme," he said.

Ms Hanna Tetteh-Kpodar and Mrs Ama Benyiwa-Doe NDC members Awutu-Senya and Gomoa-West, respectively, said the address lacked focus and direction and was vague on women's development.

"Women issues are not only embedded in the macro-economics and the creation of a Ministry for their affairs. It is deeper than that. The Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs must have a focus and a policy framework to operate with. There was nothing like that in the address. The address was rather more of an attack on the NDC", they said.

Dr Kwabena Adjei, NDC-Biakoye said the speech brooded over policies without any in depth analysis and it was a revisionist one, which portrayed Kufuor's administration as having no knowledge and grasp of the nation's problems.

He said: "How do you talk about modernising agriculture without taking into consideration the weather, the behaviour of farmers and credit as well as other forms of support to them?"