EDITORIAL: Would the NDC Please Spare Us the Nonsense!

The NPP is being bashed alright. That's because it is the most liberal and tolerant government Ghana has had since independence. Due to this tolerance, issues that people would have had no way of airing - or if they had, they would be afraid to air - are now being openly discussed.

As the governing party, naturally people would point fingers at it. Some are justified, some are not, but in the spirit of freedom of expression, everybody is allowed to have a say. Even the president is not spared and is criticized everyday about this or that lapse.

Curiously, the very many good things (like this unbridled freedom of expression) in Ghana are not being held up to show as some of the small (huge, is more likely) mercies we are enjoying.

Was it not the NDC leader, ex-Flt. Lt. Rawlings, who drunk with the intoxicating atmosphere of freedom of expression currently prevailing in Ghana went so low in the gutter of kubolo manners to liken President Kufuor to the armed robber Ataa Ayi?

Now let's get real.

We have heard the NDC pontificating about the decongestion exercises being undertaken in our urban centres. If the NDC had used the twenty years their leader had from December 1981 to January 2001 wisely, Ghana would have long been rid of this army of street vendors that now blights our urban centres.

These hapless and helpless young people on our streets are the terrible fruits from the seeds of hate, intolerance, envy, capriciousness sown during the Rawlings years.

Let us not forget that it was the Rawlings JSS/SSS system that has rendered most of these youths unemployable. These street vendors actually took root from the PNDC years, grew to huge battalions in the NDC years and have now become uncontrollable armies.

It will take years to re-educate, retrain and re-orient them into employable skills. That is a matter for our collective national will - not the cheap politics the NDC is trying to make out of it.

Come on, the NDC and their leader could not move us into a mid-income country with all their 20-year tenure. They must therefore spare us the nonsense and allow us to get on with the work - mistakes and all - of rebuilding!

At least the NPP government is not being idle. It is biting a lot of initiatives at the same time, winning here, sometimes losing there!

What did the NDC do about this same problem when they had power for twenty years ?