Nana Akufo-Addo on his way to the lecture
Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Flagbearer of the New
Patriotic Party (NPP) for the 2016 elections, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is
calling for urgent electoral reform to ensure that election results are readily
accepted by all.
“We want to get to a
situation where we can all readily accept the results of regular, fair
elections and thereby bolster our stability,” Nana Akufo-Addo stated on Tuesday
at the 2nd Alhaji Aliu Mahama Memorial Lecture.
The
lecture was organized by Aliu Mahama Foundation in memory of the former Vice
President at the packed Banquet Hall in Accra on the theme: “One Ghana:
Securing our future”.
Never again!
“We do not need
repetitions of narrow decisions in the Supreme Court after tortuous, delicate
proceedings. Brinksmanship will ultimately destroy our democracy,” he cautioned
adding “securing the future is about how we keep our country together,
peacefully”.
He said “securing the
future means safeguarding our democracy by securing the integrity of our elections;
that is why we must all support electoral reforms which even the majority on
the Supreme Court advocated.”
Nana Akufo-Addo noted that
in the past 22 years “a consensus has emerged about how we should govern
ourselves” and added that “in my view, multi party, constitutional rule is the
most potent binding instrument to keep Ghana one.”
Competent Leadership
“We have to put our nation
into good shape. We have a hard working and eager people. Our land is blessed
with riches. We need a leadership that has the competence and care to make
these riches work for the people and reach every home and family,” he said.
He added “our task is
clear…we have to make Ghana work by ensuring that our nation works in a way
that a nation serious about the welfare of its people, about its progress and
about its place in the world should work. That is how we best secure our
future.”
Pension Saga
Nana Akufo-Addo also
delved into the protracted dispute between the government and 12 organized
labour unions over the handling of workers pension saying “it has been a sad
spectacle watching the recent struggle over the Tier Two Pension.”
“The National Pensions Act
2008 (Act 766) was introduced by the NPP because we saw the need to secure a
better future for pensioners and get a critical mass of capital into the money
market for long-term investment. It was enacted to complement the work of the
Social Security and National Insurance Trust.”
He said the way forward in
the current impasse was for the government to “take its hands off the pension
and allow the scheme to work as it was intended to do,” adding “let the workers
have the decisive say on how their privately managed funds are run.”
“If it means amending the
law for greater clarity, let us do so. Let us thus demonstrate our confidence
in the private sector and this is bound to send out positive signals to the
money markets around the world that Ghana is indeed open for business.”
Best Economy
Nana Akufo-Addo said in
2009, the NDC was handed what he called the “best economy inherited by any new
government since the 1960s with oil coming in and a debt-to-GDP ratio of just
29%.”
“In the last few months to
the 2012 election, we all saw the reckless spending the NDC government
undertook in a desperate move to hold on to power. The budget deficit alone for
that year was the same as the entire national budget for 2008. Today, we are
all suffering the consequences of those irresponsible actions,” he said.
Dwindling foreign reserves
“When I checked this
morning, I was told that we have some $1.5 billion in our net foreign reserves,
just enough to cover two weeks of imports. And our debts are so big that we are
using four times the money we expect from producing oil this year to service
interest payments alone in 2014.”
He continued: “I also
learnt that for 2015, the rate of growth of our economy is expected to be much
smaller than it has been this year. The expected growth rate – 3.9% – would be
the worst since the year 2000.”
“This does not seem like
the year of recovery the Government is telling us that 2015 will be and the new
Budget is hardly the budget for transforming our economy. The situation now is
worse than we were in a year ago; 2013 was worse than 2012; and 2012 was worse
than 2011,” he said.
Free SHS
He waded into the controversial decision by the NDC government to implement the NPP’s free SHS policy which the same government had said in the 2012 election campaign that it was impossible even in the next 20 years.
He waded into the controversial decision by the NDC government to implement the NPP’s free SHS policy which the same government had said in the 2012 election campaign that it was impossible even in the next 20 years.
“I understand that some
people are curious to find out what I think of the recent announcement by the
government of the adoption of a free SHS policy. I will say this: a lot of work
was done on our free SHS policy. There are in this country today several people
who are quite knowledgeable on the subject and who spent a lot of time
anticipating the various difficulties that would confront the country in
implementing the policy. They will be happy to share their knowledge if they
are asked.”
“I need to state here one
of my fundamental beliefs: the NPP’s fortunes do not depend on the NDC failing.
If President Mahama is, indeed, introducing free SHS in the 2015-2016 academic
year I would say alleluia and be thankful to the Almighty for this particular
road to Damascus moment. It means that we all now agree that it is both doable
and necessary. Amen!”
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