Last Monday, the National Democratic Congress finally presented its 2020 manifesto – three months into general elections. And we are talking about a party that is in opposition and claiming readiness to recapture power.
The NDC, before that had been spending precious time shooting down initiatives that had been spelt out in the governing NPP’s manifesto, which, interestingly, the NDC has elected to give ‘flesh’ to, in re-engineering, or even dreaming up, its manifesto.
EXIMBANK et al
While the NDC informs us, for instance, that it created the EXIMBANK, there is nothing on record to show that EXIMBANK under the NDC delivered in the volumes that EXIMBANK under the NPP’s Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo administration is delivering.
The simple truth is that the NDC’s claim to policy, financial support and structures to underpin private sector development showed only to the convenience and benefit of appointees, family members and cronies of flagbearer John Dramani Mahama.
This is evidenced in SADA, GYEEDA, SUBAH, Ibrahim Mahama’s empire that allegedly encroached on all prized lands, from bauxite deposits and banking institutions that collapsed under Mahama, through La and Teshie Stool Lands, some of them still under contention, to plain thievery in which appointees are refunding monies to avoid being jailed.
That is why the NDC’s proposed GHC10 billion to support businesses is seen as quixotic: indeed, Mahama and the NDC – on record – haven’t ever proved anything that close.
‘Demolition Congress’
Basic logic tells us that before one can create jobs, he must have proven structurally that he could sustain existing jobs.
It was under the Mahama administration that we witnessed a deliberate policy to crowd out teachers and nurses from the obligatory job market for the public sector, citing IMF policy to reduce wage bill.
As for Mahama’s promises on agriculture, every producer – from Tono and Vea, and Pwalugu to Bongo – knows that he cannot be sincere in anything about agriculture because of the legendary SADA scam in which millions of dollars went into the private pockets of his friends and cronies.
In any event, what is the guarantee that the NDC, under John Mahama, can sustain the growth that the NPP has painstakingly secured, after its bungling of the economy? And, what is even the guarantee that it can raise the volumes of cash it is citing to roll out jobs and generate businesses, when the party is infested with appointees ready to gobble state monies entrusted to them?
At least, we saw that in the Venture Capital saga in which appointees decided to do business with state cash, with John Mahama looking the other way.
This fluke about ‘People’s this and People’s that’, which the NDC had used to deceive innocent citizens, cannot wash, in the same manner that daubing swine in gold colours cannot prevent it from returning to the mud where it finds natural comfort. Dubbing the event a ‘Rescue Mission,’ therefore, fails to wipe out the NDC’s legacy as a ‘Demolition Congress.’
Loose statements
When John Mahama asserts that the economy is in tatters, without quoting figures and credible sources, he gives himself away as the unfortunate creation of the Ahwois for mischief in a Ghana where ordinary citizens know that the economy is resilient – even after NDC goons had conspired to loot away funds meant for private operators in expanding businesses to create more and more jobs.
As typical of them, the foisting of Mahama and the ‘Babies With Sharp Teeth’ on the NDC and, hopefully, all Ghanaians, is still strategic – intended at lying and hoping that our usually vulnerable electorate would fall for their trickery.
Ghanaians are now wide awake politically, and so it is no longer about what you promise to do; it is more of know they know you for, and what you have done before.
That is the story about the ‘Peoples Manifesto’, which is empty in feasible ideas and loud in propaganda.
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