Govt is "killing" businesses with tax increases - Bagbin

The Minority Leader in Parliament, Mr Alban Babgin on Sunday accused the government of "killing" private sector businesses and impoverishing Ghanaian workers through tax increases. Mr Babgin, who said there was also a total collapse of national security, further accused the government of failing to deliver its campaign promises to make life better for the people and rather resorting to "politics of deceit and lies", thus worsening the plight of the people.

He was addressing a seminar organised by the University of Cape Coast branch of the Tertiary Educational Institutions Network (TEIN) of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) at Cape Coast. The seminar, which was on the theme; " NDC vision, now, 2004 and beyond", was to brief the students on 'the state of the nation'. A new 10-member executive of the TEIN, led by Mr Emmanuel Adenyo, was inducted into office for a two-year term at the function.

The Minority Leader, described the government as a "disaster" because of its inability to scrap the cash and carry system and solve youth unemployment, challenging it to organise a platform where all political parties could analyse the state of the nation to enable Ghanaians to judge for themselves. Mr Babgin, who is also the MP for Nadowli North, declared that the Minority would continue to criticise the government until it fulfilled its campaign promises.

The Minority Leader expressed concern about ethnic imbalance in the membership of the Cabinet following the resignation of the former Minister of the Interior, Alhaji Malik Al-Hassan Yakubu and described the situation as unfortunate. He reiterated NDC's determination to regain power in the next general election and said the party's leadership was revising its policies with the view to injecting new ideas towards achieving this goal. The MP for Bole-Bamboi, Mr John Mahama accused the government of not being committed to its principle of zero tolerance for corruption and also "discriminating" in the pursuit of offenders.

The government had turned a blind eye to acts of corruption by some government officials and is only interested in pursuing its opponents, to the extent of "sending innocent people to jail", Mr Mahama, a former Communications Minister said, adding that the real test of its commitment was to deal with corrupt officials. The national youth organiser, Mr Iddrisu Haruna called on the youth to rally behind the party, which he said, would be training about 60,000 student loyalists to act as its agents during the next elections.

Dr Ato Quarshie, Central Regional Chairman of the party, urged the youth wings of the party to help the National Executives to map out new campaign strategies to facilitate its victory next time round.