NPP flag
The December 2020 general elections is hitting fever pitch, and with barely three months to go, both the governing New Patriotic Party and leading opposition National Democratic Congress are slugging it out in winning the hearts and souls of the electorate.
Unfortunately, in the last couple of days, we have witnessed series of below-the-belt punches that point to an escalation in dirty politics from the desperate NDC.
Even as they try to appear to be sticking to the issues, to prove that they had been as competent as the NPP, the NDC communicators are finding it difficult staying on course because they know for a fact that their claims are spurious. Knowing that they would be exposed if they kept campaigning on issues, they have moved away from that stance, engaging in personal attacks and ethnicity vitriolic.
Issues NDC must tackle
The NDC, obviously punctured over the bare facts of undeniable NPP remarkable achievements, is pretending that there has never been a Free SHS or redemption from an IMF programme, after the economy had been bungled under the watch of former President John Dramani Mahama.
They are pretending the National Health Insurance Scheme, which the NDC bungled, has never been restored back to life by the NPP. Additionally, they are pretending that the teeming thousands of youth have never found jobs created by the NPP at a time the NDC disdained any chances of teachers and nurses ever finding jobs during their tenure.
Instead of showing what they did by way of infrastructure, after they had presented ghost projects, they are struggling looking for evidence that the NPP claims of adding remarkably to the infrastructure deficit created by the NDC is a lie, using wrong standards and measurements.
COVID-19 success stories
While Ghana is on record to have performed creditably in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, the NDC still wants the electorate to believe that nothing has been achieved, even though the World Health Organisation and the UN laud Ghana as a leading nation in the fight in terms of testing, tracing and treating.
That is aside of global businesses and investors streaming in to set up factories and invest; or produce and export under the 1D1F initiatives.
To show how the NPP has lifted Ghana’s image and put it back on the map, Ghana has just been offered the ECOWAS Chair, in reviving the fortunes of member countries by moving regional integration notches higher into an African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) pedestal.
From economic growth to agricultural, health, education to industrial reforms, the NDC sees only ethnicity and the persons of NPP functionaries and where they hail from.
Lost battle
From the northern regions through the Middle Belt and the Volta and Oti regions, the NDC, aware that its fortunes are slipping away on account of game-changing initiatives like the Free SHS programme and the several agricultural initiatives, is resorting to the tricks it had used in the 90s and during the last John Mahama campaigns to try and see if it may work.
As we predicted, their trump card is let loose their ‘Babies With Sharp Teeth’ – with Mahama as the locomotive, in attempting to confuse the electorate. As we saw, the last straw they hoped would break the back of the camel was John Mahama’s reference to the age of President Nana Akufo-Addo.
The sad spectacle is that respected moderates in the party look on, while new-breed political neophytes push the NDC down a precipice using foul language among decent northerner communities.
In our opinion, the noble thing to do is for the NPP to continue sticking to issues that give meaning to lives and livelihoods of ordinary Ghanaians, more especially the teeming youth who have found hope in the party under President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
That, we believe, is the only road to victory.
Source: dailystatesman.com.gh/Statesman Leader
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