Former Head of Information and Public Affairs at Ghana’s Embassy in Washington, DC, Kofi Tonto has questioned why the Mahama administration allegedly allowed a port policy it now considers problematic to remain in place for two years.

Tonto said the National Democratic Congress (NDC) came into office promising to reset the country, including its security apparatus, and had already changed or abolished several policies and programmes associated with the previous administration.

“Ghanaians voted for a reset,” he said. “Among the resets was the reset of national security. That President Mahama is coming in to retool, rewire, reset the entire country, including our security apparatus.”

He pointed to government decisions involving PMMC, the e-Levy, and the medical drone programme as examples of policies or programmes that were changed or discontinued.

He argues that if the government considered the port policy introduced under the previous administration to be bad, it had the authority to change it.

"If this policy that he is referencing was a bad policy, why wait for a national or international embarrassment?" Tonto asked.

He said the government had already demonstrated that it could make changes when it disagreed with policies inherited from the previous administration.

“They've had the opportunity to change so many things that they didn't like," he said.

Tonto therefore rejected the argument that the current government should continue to blame a previous administration for a policy it had the power to change.

"I am saying that Ghanaians voted for all, cumulatively, the very bad things that NDC said we were doing. And therefore, a new government coming in has the powers, has the mandate to fix and reset the bad things," he said.

He said the central question should be why a policy allegedly considered harmful was allowed to continue until the country faced an international embarrassment.

"Why should we even allow this discussion to go on?" he asked.