Posted
on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By
William Yaw Owusu
Thursday,
December 03, 2015
Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, New
Patriotic Party (NPP) vice presidential candidate for the 2016 general elections,
says President John Dramani Mahama cannot run away from the fact that his
government has displayed abysmal performance and so must not be re-elected.
“After a
catalogue of the state of our country, it is remarkable that the president will
complain about the use of the word ‘incompetent,’ but we understand that His
Excellency the President does not want us to use the word ‘incompetent’ to
describe the performance of his government,” he said at a press conference
organised by the NPP yesterday to critique the 2016 budget statement presented
to Parliament recently by the NDC government through the Finance Minister, Seth
Terkper.
“But it looks like His Excellency the President was only upset about the
incompetence bit and not the corruption for reasons we have not yet been told.
But possibly, his failure to protest at this other description is an acceptance
of the generally accepted belief that he has lost the fight against
corruption,” Dr Bawumia stated.
He indicated that the ranking of Ghana as the second most corrupt
country in Africa by Transparency International in its latest report is an
indication of the festering canker.
“Mahama has created a toxic mixture of incompetence and corruption. This
has resulted in an explosion of suffering across the country,” he said.
NDC’s Expertise
He said since President Mahama
does not want to be described as incompetent, the NPP set its mind to “finding
out what the NDC government has been competent at doing in the last seven
years.
“Actually, we have to admit that
this NDC government is very competent at the following: mismanaging the economy,
creating looting and sharing, propaganda, perpetuating dumsor, increasing unemployment
and collapsing the NHIS.”
He also said the NDC members are
masters in “cancelling teacher and nursing trainee allowances, not meeting statutory
payments, not paying contractors, making SADA guinea fowls run to Burkina Faso,
collapsing industries, collapsing agriculture, causing massive exchange rate
depreciation, massive unsustainable borrowing, causing high interest rates and
failing to fulfil their promises.”
Corrupt Government
“As a matter of record, we want
to reiterate that not only do we say that this NDC government is incompetent,
we also add that the government is very corrupt.
He said corruption and incompetence
of the NDC government had resulted in widespread suffering among Ghanaians,
whether rich or poor.
“Teachers are suffering, teacher
trainees are suffering, nurses are suffering, nursing trainees are suffering, patients
are suffering, students are suffering, traders are suffering, pensioners are
suffering, drivers are suffering, contractors are suffering, civil servants are
suffering, farmers are suffering, industries are suffering and kayayei are
suffering!”Dr Bawumia, a renowned economist, noted.
Mahama’s Propaganda Data
Dr Bawumia said that President
Mahama’s recent analysis of Ghana’s debt stock where he said in Ho that 41% of Ghana’s
external debt of $14 billion was accumulated by the NPP government between 2001
and 2008 can never be true.
“The president’s faulty data on
the debt situation suggests either an unwillingness on his part to be honest
(as was seen in his denial of the possibility of Ghana heading to the IMF) to
the Ghanaian people on the reckless borrowing and where it has landed us, or
the possibility that his economic advisors do not tell him the whole truth and
thus, he does not appreciate the true scale of the mess.”
He observed, “It can be seen
that as a result of the HIPC initiative and prudent borrowing, Ghana’s external
debt stock actually declined from $6.1 billion in 2000 to $3.8 billion by 2008
(the first time in history). The debt has since increased by $10.2 to $14
billion in 2015. So how is what the president said in Ho possible? The facts
therefore show that 72% of Ghana’s external debt stock and 90% of Ghana’s total
debt stock were accumulated during the last seven years.”
NDC’s Credibility
Dr Bawumia said that the NDC
government “has also proven over the last seven years that it lacks credibility
in the management of the economy.”
He cited the importation of
school uniforms - when it already had an agreement with a local printer in
order to boost job creation - as a classical case of an incompetent government.
“The government entered an
agreement with Printex for school uniforms to be manufactured in Ghana. Today,
the textile industry is losing thousands of jobs and the government has reneged
on this agreement. The government promised the allocation of GH¢100 million a
year to SADA for 20 years.
The allocation in the 2015 budget was GH¢25,000;
when we complained, the allocation in the 2016 budget was a significant zero.”
Denials & Exposure
He said that the government
denied that it had defaulted on repayment of loans to the AfDB only to be exposed
by evidence and added that the government also denied that it had used the 2014
$1 billion Eurobond proceeds to repay Bank of Ghana debt until they were
exposed by the facts.
He asked the government to explain
what happened to the understandings reached at Senchi as contained in the
Senchi Consensus report and said “it turned out, as we knew, to be a propaganda
exercise.”
Dr Bawumia underscored, “The
government denied that they would seek an IMF bailout. They are denying that they will lay off civil
servants in 2017. They promised to make Ghana the cleanest country in West
Africa. Today, according to UNICEF, Ghana has placed second in cholera ranking
in West Africa with 28,944 cases.”
Swapping Budget
The NPP vice presidential
candidate said he had been informed that the 2016 budget that was submitted to Parliament
“has apparently been replaced by another budget because the original budget
submitted to Parliament was full of errors, adding that “This is not the
hallmark of a serious government.
“It is time to change this
government. It is time to build a new globally competitive economy with the NPP
under the leadership of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. The immediate goal is to
make Ghana the most people-friendly and most business-friendly economy in
Africa.”
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