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General News of Wednesday, 27 December 2017

Source: Daniel Kaku

Amissah-Arthur should stop making a mockery of himself - NPP communicator

Former Vice President Amissah Arthur Former Vice President Amissah Arthur

A member of ruling New Patriotic Party's communication team, P.K Sarpong has chided former Vice President Paa Kwesi Armissah-Arthur for criticising NPP's flagship Free SHS policy.

According to Mr. Sarpong "the former Vice President of Ghana stance conflicts with the one he and his boss used to exude prior to the 2016 elections".

"The only solution to the myriad of challenges that our educational sector was facing was just access, according to them, and that anything in the region of free education should be dispensed with.

Such a bold policy, as far as they were concerned, could and should be embraced in 2032, and therefore, any attempt to do otherwise would prove to be counterproductive.

In the light of this, huge sums of monies were injected into advertisements all tailored to dismiss the relevance of a free senior high school programme.

Countless numbers of adverts were made in their relentless efforts to tell Ghanaians that the Akufo-Addo proposed free senior high school policy would be unwholesome and should be discounted", he emphasized.

According to him, "Having given the proposal a great deal of thought, Ghanaians were able to decipher the senseless arguments the then governing NDC members were making and the futuristic yet sane proposition from the then opposition New Patriotic Party and came to the conclusion that the policy ought to be given room to operate, and thus voted massively for the New Patriotic Party".

He added that, "One would expect that a modicum of common sense would prompt these people to eat the humble pie and apologize to the populace over their insensitivity towards their vehement opposition to the free senior high school concept, what was fed to us, consistently, was the National Democratic Congress stoically sticking to their unholy sermons against the Free Senior High School programme".

"They have been furiously highlighting the teething issues the policy is being confronted with, making sure that they drum home the mantra that the policy should not have been given the green light this time around.

It could be recalled that quite recently, the former President of the Republic, John Dramani Mahama, at their skewed unity walk event, highlighted the ills of the programme, and said a future NDC government would discontinue the programme. He was soundly lambasted for his anti-free education sentiments and had to quickly retrace his steps.

Okudzeto Ablakwa, Solomon Nkansah, Kofi Adams and many of their party gurus have not hidden their intents of scrapping the free education policy if they come back to power in future.

In effect, the National Democratic Congress as an entity believes the Free Senior High School policy is not ideal and should be relegated to the background of insignificance.

It is therefore extremely difficult reconciling the position Amissah-Arthur is espousing with what the large majority of the members of the NDC believe should be the case.

Are we to believe that Amissah-Arthur is setting himself apart from the position the NDC holds in high esteem or this is his method of showcasing to the world that should he be given the opportunity to lead the NDC he would depart from what is considered to be the norm in the party?

Much as his suggestion may not be that oafish, it is important to also reiterate the fact that the NDC doesn't have anything worth considering to contribute to the discussions around the Free Senior High School policy.

The guaranteed truth is that none of these NDC members has anything sound to add to the discussion since the only avenue to deal with the challenges confronting the policy is to scrap it.

Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur should know that comedy doesn't sell any longer, and should, therefore, get serious if he is nursing an ambition to lead the NDC in the next elections".