Tsatsu Tsikata touts PNDC, Rawlings’ contribution to Ghana’s economic recovery

Renowned lawyer, Tsatsu Tsikata, has said while it is easy to forget the significant role played by the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) in Ghana’s economic recovery, anyone who believes in social justice must acknowledge that critical era in the country’s history.

Delivering an address as the guest speaker of the maiden Leadership Dialogue Series, Mr Tsikata said the Jerry John Rawlings-led PNDC era propelled Ghana into a period of economic recovery after a long period of serious stagnation.

“That decade of economic as well as social recovery was during a time often referred to as Africa’s lost decade. So, Africa was losing a decade while Ghana was gaining a period of economic recovery. It is very easy to forget the depths to which the country had sunk,” he said.

The Leadership Dialogue Series is the flagship programme of the Centre for Social Justice, an independent centre-left think tank based in Ghana.

The series is aimed at tapping into the knowledge and expertise of leaders who have served in various national capacities.

Delivering his address on the theme “Rawlings-Mills axis of the NDC & President Mahama's selection of a running mate,” Mr Tsikata said the swift decision by Mr Rawlings and his team to launch a campaign for national resource mobilisation helped greatly in Ghana’s economic restoration.

Mr Tsikata himself was a cabinet member of the PNDC regime that ruled Ghana from 1981 to 1992.

“Some of you…may have been university students in that [PNDC] period and experienced, for instance, the mobilisation of the country as a whole to evacuate cocoa that was locked up in the countryside because of all the broken down infrastructure as well as the collapse of national institutions such as the COCOBOD at the time,” he said of the pre-PNDC era.

According to him, that mobilisation process was a key part of the restoration of the economy and that brought about sustained economic growth and national development.

“An aspect of that involved the insisting of justice for the cocoa farmer whose share of the world market price of cocoa during that period was minimal. By changing that situation and ensuring that the farmer was earning a significant and an increasing share of the world market price.

“We may today take that history for granted but it was achieved through that period of economic recovery and its continuation under the NDC government that succeeded the PNDC,” he said.