NDC manifesto: Failure to highlight graft bad – GII

Anti-graft body Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) has expressed disappointment with it describes as government’s failure to highlight corruption as part of its 2016 manifesto.

President John Dramani Mahama on Tuesday, September 13, presented the highlights of the party’s manifesto for the 2016 polls which precedes the document’s official launch on Saturday September 17, where he outlined his party’s developmental blueprint for the next four years if re-elected.

The manifesto highlights contained 130 promises on how the NDC government intended to build a strong and resilient Ghanaian economy. But in an interview with Class News’ Kwesi Parker-Wilson, the Executive Director of GII, Linda Ofori-Kwafo, said she was disappointed in the NDC because the president failed to outline how his government would deal with issues of corruption in his next government.

“When the president was giving the highlights of the NDC manifesto, I sat by my television religiously to listen to him and to know what the direction will be when it comes to anti-corruption. Governance is broad, corruption falls under governance. Unfortunately, I did not hear the president mention anything about the party’s intention to continue or to do more in the area of fighting corruption,” she stated.

“I might have missed it, I sat there throughout though. I don’t remember dozing off and I didn’t hear that. Maybe it’s in the main document, but he did not think about that as a highlight issue for him to raise. I think we had great expectation of hearing something because the highlight presentation took a long time and he touched on many issues.

I remember he touched on governance as a broad thing … but I was particular about hearing something about what the party would do to move Ghana’s anti-corruption efforts from the passage of legislations to the enforcement of the laws and then prosecutions and sanctions of people found culpable – that I did not hear. And for me, it’s a big disappointment.”