#FixTheCountry: Next NDC manifesto will speak it – Sam George

Sam Nartey George (NDC – Ningo-Prampram MP) has indicated that the opposition NDC will incorporate concerns from the ongoing #FixTheCountry social media campaign into their people’s manifesto for the 2024 elections.

Speaking to Nana Aba Anamoah on Starr Chat on Wednesday, May 12, monitored by GhanaWeb, the MP stated: “There is a lot to fix about us [citizens] but it is a worthless venture if the system is not fixed, so you can fix yourself for all you can, but it would be worthless if the system is not fixed. We only get value fixing ourselves if the system is fixed.”

The social media campaign dubbed #FixTheCountry was initiated by some unhappy Ghanaians to vent their spleens over the failure of successive political administrations to improve the lives of the citizenry.

Mostly youth, tens of thousands of posts have been made on social media highlighting some of these inadequacies.

Dominant in the sentiments shared on Twitter are rising youth unemployment, dilapidated health system, skyrocketing accommodation rental charges, and poor road network.

“This is the right time for us to stand up and come together as one people to speak and let them [government] know that we are tired,” Joshua Boye-Doe, a social media user and initiator of the #FixTheCountry campaign said.

Coupled with corruption, erratic power and water supply, the advocates say the problems in Ghana have made their lives difficult.

In spite of the genuine concerns, there was some counter hashtag #FixYourself through which the incumbent NPP's loyalists tried to communicate to the citizenry that unless they fix themselves, they will not realize the country is being fixed by the Akufo-Addo administration.

Sam George described the counter hashtag #FixYourself as “trappings of the arrogance of power” which only happens when a political party sees that it is about to lose power.

“For a party that came to power on the back of social media active campaigns, for them not to appreciate the effectiveness and efficiency of that machine and not understand how to counter it and turn around the power of that machine and they think that they could stand in a way of it was suicidal,” he explained.

Sam George argued that the attitude of some members of the NPP “shows what arrogance of power can do”.

He said, the #FixTheCountry campaign unlike the #OccupyGhana campaign has nothing to do with the NDC and that it is only people who are “mentally deranged' [who] think that it is wrong for anybody to ask for a better Ghana. That mental disability is not caused by a psychological disorder; it’s caused by greed and access to cheap state funds that has clouded your sense of judgement.”

He observed further that those telling the campaigners to fix themselves are those “chopping the state money”, who don’t see the value of what the campaigners are trying to say.

“How can you say you don’t want a better Ghana?” he quizzed.

He indicated that the #FixTheCountry campaign is absolutely fantastic because when the Occupy Ghana started, it made the then NDC administration do so many things right which did not eventually make the party stay in power, but rather it benefited the larger citizenry.

Sam George noted, “So, today, if I find myself in government again come 2025, and there is a social active movement, I want to engage and see how actually we can harness the power of that movement and use it to better the lot of the Ghanaian, respond in a more constructive way […] the NDC has a fantastic opportunity of picking salient points to even make our people’s manifesto better in 2024.”