Akufo-Addo’s presidency holds brighter prospects for Ghana

Without any controversy, connoisseurs of the political landscape of the Ghanaian constitutional and democratic process can attest to the fact that, the Danquah-Busia-Dombo political offshoot, the New Patriotic Party(NPP) has and continues to be the beckon of hope in the expansion of the frontiers of fundamental human rights, due process and the rule of law as the means of ensuring prosperity and sustainable economic growth and the freedom of the individual in a property owning free-market ambience.

In fact, the strides Ghana has made in the fourth republic in consolidating democratic rule is largely credited to the NPP having being at the fore-fronts demanding a freer governance process with emphasis on the private sector leading the economic growth process which it gave meaning to during its eight year mandate from 2001-2008 under its ‘’golden age of doing business’’ mantra.

As Ghanaians bemoan and lament about the current severe predicaments they find themselves in today and clamoring for the return to power by the NPP to lead the nation out of the constricting doldrums of stagnation, quality leadership would be central to this call.

Africa’s innumerable and hydra-headed complications and challenges today are traceable to the leadership malaise that the continent had been plagued with and particularly in our Ghanaian circumstance.

Against this backdrop, the Africa Young Conservatives Dialogue, Ghana (TAYCD-GH) has taken a keen interest in the impending 18th October 2014 Presidential Primaries scheduled to take place this Saturday by the NPP.

Relevantly, as an organization avowed to the ideals of entrenching and consolidating conservative free-market democratic rule in Africa and Ghana for that matter, we posit here and now that, the only individual among the array of equally preferable aspirants with an impeccable and sterling track record of leading the nation on that trajectory of economic renaissance is Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo.

This nation is at the cross-roads in its socio-economic and democratic process having to deal with or confronted by myriads of challenges affecting the livelihoods of great numbers of our people amidst an unaccountable political governance structure spear-headed by a social democratic administrative machinery festering endemic corruption and phenomenal plunder of the national purse. 

It is disheartening to note that, our prospects as a promising African nation is fast evaporating into thin atmosphere with mounting unemployment rates(particularly youth and or graduate unemployment),mounting national debt at 71% of GDP, unbridled public and political corruption and patronage, rampant power outages and general fiscal indiscipline and profligate and frivolous expenditures, high budget deficit around 15%, constricting and high cost of capital(lending rate at 30%) and freely depreciating national currency, the Cedi) amongst others. The need ostensibly for an incorruptible, selfless and knowledgeable leadership is imperative in any effort at salvaging and restoring hope to the country.

Coming on the heels of the 2012 Elections Petition at the Supreme Court, Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo has shown evidently, that he respects and reveres the noble tenets and time--honored ideals of democracy; values his own late-father Edward Akufo-Addo and his compatriots have bequeathed to the patriots of our land.

Central to our conviction and believe in him is the fact that, he believes in the youth of the nation as the fulcrum around which development opportunities revolved. His penchant for and assertion of building a society of opportunities and aspirations for the growing youth populations and structurally changing the economic growth poles for the creation of a modern society befitting as Africa’s shining example deserves commendation.

Akufo Addo has shown great trust in a youthful Vice Presidential Candidate, one of Ghana’s finest and Africa’s best economic/financial geniuses, Dr. Mahmoud Bawumiah to partner him to deliver those goodies necessary to empowering our youth; the latter having so discharged himself as an astute deputy governor of the national exchequer and leading the economic reforms which rapidly led Ghana out of a Highly Indebted Poor Country(HIPC) status Ghana was plunged into by the NPP’S predecessor administration (with a Debt to GDP ratio of over a hundred and eighty-nine percent(189%) in 2000) into a Middle Income sovereign state before the exit of the NPP in 2009.

Without ambiguity, the TAYCD-GH wish to proffer and entreat the NPP national delegates and the entire electoral college across the nation to be guided by their sense of history, recognition for unbridled loyalty and selflessness to the cause of the party to choose and elect this cross-generational leader knowing copiously well that posterity and the ancestry of the party would not forgive them if they slack on this solemn call to duty.

Ghanaians’ hope and aspirations for a reliable, transparent and accountable leader would have also been irreversibly dashed with tremendous trepidations.

Emmanuel Attafuah-Danso

Convener: The Africa Young Conservatives Dialogue, Ghana (TAYCD-GH)

Accra

emmmanuel.attafuah-danso@yahoo.com