Nov polls: Let’s scrutinise promises – JOY

An independent presidential candidate in the 2012 elections, Jacob Osei Yeboah, has asked the electorate and the media to take on politicians for promises they make.

As the campaigning towards the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections warm up, aspirants have been making a lot of promises. The most recent one was made by the New Patriotic Party’s flagbearer Nana Akufo Addo. He said a future Akufo-Addo government will build a factory in each of Ghana’s 216 districts nationwide.

But Mr Yeboah said grand promises are easier to make than honour, and Ghanaians and journalists, especially, should subject such politicians to scrutiny.

“Anyone can make promises. If Ghanaians give me the chance, I am coming to build the Hanging Garden of Babylon at the [Kwame Nkrumah] Circle, so when it rains nobody will drown because [Kwame Nkrumah] Circle will be suspended. Tell people this is what I intend to do,” he joked on Accra100.5FM’s morning show, Ghana Yensom, on Thursday June 23, adding: “It’s easier said than done.”

He said such lofty assurances belonged to the past, being commonplace in the 1970s. “…But those kinds of politics are no more with us. We are growing as a people,” he said, certain that after 24 years of multiparty democracy, Ghanaians needed to do things in a “more mature way” and not “accept anything we are told”.