NPP Is the Better Evil

In what appears to be a theater of exchanges over the impression that both the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC) have all failed in governance, the Former Deputy Northern Regional Minister, Mohammed Adam Amin-Anta, has admitted the New Patriotic Party (NPP) as a "better evil" as against the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

He said if Ghanaians were to distinguish between the performance of the past NDC government and the current government, as far as good economic policies, respect for rule of law and democracy in governance were concerned, then the NDC was no match to NPP.

He therefore entreated well-meaning Ghanaians to make an informed decision and differentiate between the "bad evil (NDC) and the better evil (NPP)" before the forthcoming 2008 elections.

Mr. Amin-Anta was reacting to what he termed as "an unfair pronouncement" reported to have been made recently against the government on taxes and petroleum increment by the "Wahala Demonstrators, when he was addressing members of the Tamale Polytechnic branch of the Tertiary Education Students Confederacy (TESCON) last week in Tamale during the inaugural ceremony of the 11 newly elected executives of the confederacy.

According to Amin-Anta, who is now the Acting Tamale Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE), the NDC had no moral justification to criticize the government or describe her as "evil and insensitive to Ghanaians", since the present hardships on Ghanaians, as he noted, were as a result of the undernourished economic foundation laid by the (P)NDC government.

"I always laugh when I hear people from a political party like the NDC, which is known in the history of Ghana as the most violent, insensitive, rude and undemocratic party, describing NPP, which is the only traditional party with rich economic policies and the only party that is bent on serving nothing but the interest of the people, as evil and insensitive.

"I accept the fact that we (NPP) are evils, but I know for a fact that between NDC and NPP in terms of everything, we are better evils, because at least we have been able to reconcile Ghana, we have also introduced free medical care (National Health Insurance Scheme), implemented the Capitation Grant programme, stabilized the economy and have also enforced the Rule of Law and democracy. So are we not better than the government that subjected most Ghanaians to torture, humiliation and intimidations among others," he explained and quizzed.

The Acting MCE said that, the poor economic policies of the NDC government and their failure to initiate the Deregulation system in the Petroleum Industry in 1995, led the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) to accumulate a colossal debt of ?3.2 trillion, which he said the NPP government had to pay a huge amount of ?5 trillion, to clear the debt in 2005, including the accumulated interest.

According to him, the hullabaloos by the NDC on petrol and taxes were nothing more than what he called "academic injustice", because according to him "if you are educated in Ghana you will be aware that government does not determine petroleum prices".

He wondered why a politician worth his salt would mount a platform and put up a baseless argument to the effect that government had increased petroleum prices, contending that it was because the NDC people were intellectually ignorant.

He continued that the NDC had always seen the good reasons in deregulation but they were not competent enough to implement it. Amin-Anta further stated that the NDC, in 1995, announced its intention to introduce deregulation in the petroleum sector which led to the formulation of what he called the Automatic Adjustment Formula (AAF) that was to be used to determine petrol prices. This, he recalled, was approved by Parliament but eventually turned out to a total failure.

He said under the AAF system it was stated that anytime Crude Oil prices increased on the World Market and it did not reflect in our domestic prices and the increase was more than 2.5% the government would have to push the extra increases to the consumers, but the government only had to absorb the increases if it was below 2.5%.

Interestingly, since 1995 up to the time NDC left the presidency in 2000, increases in Crude Oil prices were always above 20% but because of their bad economic policies and their ill political interests they were afraid to pass it on to the consumers and went ahead to take monies from Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB) to subsidize the petroleum products which nearly led to the collapse of TOR and GCB.

"This is why at a point the NPP government had to sell some of the shares of GCB to resuscitate the bank", he revealed.

He alleged that the ?3.2 trillion debt TOR accumulated in the name of subsidization was more than the entire primary capital of all banks in Ghana coming together, including Standard Chartered Bank and Barclays Bank.

The outspoken MCE admitted that "subsidy is not bad as a policy but as liberal economists, as we are in NPP, we believe that subsidy must be targeted.

You shouldn't subsidize something that will benefit the rich more than the poor. That was why we removed the subsidization policy. But even then we did not remove subsidy entirely as NDC and the Wahala Demonstrators wanted Ghanaians to believe. In 2004 even though we had started the deregulation, government subsidized petroleum to the tune of ?2.1 trillion, through good economic policies and pragmatic measures".

On tax components in the petroleum prices, Amin-Anta asserted that Ghana, as a nation, had eleven (11) taxes in the prices of petroleum products out of which he said the NDC government introduced eight (8) and three (3) by the NPP government. "So who is a better evil? He asked.

He accentuated that the three taxes the NPP introduced and approved by parliament included the Tema Oil Refinery Debt Recovery Levy (TORDRL), whichwas to clear the ?5 trillion TOR debt, the Social Mitigation Levy (SML), which was also forces the rich to subsidize the poor,part of which accumulated monies he said had gone into Capitation grant and Metro Mass Transport and the third tax being the Crop Subsidization Levy (CSL), which aimed at subsidizing kerosene and LPG, the most used petroleum products by the poor. It was aimed at discouraging the rampant use of firewood and for that matter deforestation.