NPP would lose if polls were held today – Vanderpuije

If elections were held in Ghana today, the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) would lose because the government has failed Ghanaians, Ablekuma South MP Alfred Oko Vanderpuije has said.

According to Mr Vanderpuije, the NPP’s performance in government is below par compared to the previous National Democratic Congress administration which the NPP severely criticised.

Speaking on the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class91.3FM on Tuesday 30 May, he told show host Moro Awudu: “Going into the [2016] elections, with everything that was happening under the NDC administration led by His Excellency John Dramani Mahama – we were attending to the needs of our schools, road networks, railway networks, attending to the needs of energy, attending to those challenges. We were busy attending to all those things, then the opposition party came along and said: ‘This government is working with too many people as ministers of state, this government is borrowing too much money, the utilities are too high, this government is incompetent.’ Today, they are saying don’t use that word ‘incompetent’…

“Secondly, the same party now in power hasn’t done anything about utility bills…they haven’t done anything about it and they will not do anything about it, mark my words. It is going to continue, that is what people are facing every day. They told them [Ghanaians] as soon as they come to office it is going to change, but it hasn’t changed.

“They said we were taking too many ministers of state [but] now you come and you are close to tripling it – 110 ministers. And you were calling us incompetent but you needed 110 ministers to justify you can do the work? You don’t need 110 ministers.

“Today, Ghana has the highest ministerial appointments with a population of 27 million, so who is incompetent? So Ghanaians have already seen. They have seen that this government is not going to offer them anything and, therefore, I’m telling you if there was election today they would lose.

“I’m on the ground, parliament has been on recess, so I’ve been on the streets of my constituency, I’ve been in schools, on the streets, in homes everyday …I’m at the Mamprobi Police Station painting the whole police station, it has never been painted since we knew it as children. I’m cleaning the gutters, working with the community, visiting the polyclinics, I know what is happening. I talk to the people every day and I know that today, if you were to put a ballot box anywhere in this country, NPP would lose.”