PPP: 'Incompetent' Mahama's performance 'abysmal'

The administration of President John Mahama is not only "incompetent" but has also performed "abysmally", the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) has rated.

Buttressing his rating of the President's performance, the party's General Secretary Kofi Asamoah Siaw told Citi News Tuesday that: "This President has supervised a depreciation of the Ghana cedi [to] well over 60 percent when he took over this administration."

"He has moved the inflation rate from single digit, which used to be a chorus of the NDC, to double figures," he said.

Mr Asamoah Siaw's assertions come a day after President Mahama tackled Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, running mate to the New Patriotic Party's flagbearer on Monday that he has no right to call him "incompetent".

"…You still hear Bawumia say incompetent Mahama. You’ve never held any responsibility near the presidency before; you don’t know what it is like to be President.

"I’ll take that from Kufuor or from Rawlings because they’ve been there before. All of you guys [NPP critics] have never ever come near the presidency. [Do] you know what it takes to be a President? And you stand and say ‘incompetent Mahama administration,’” the President said at a rally at the Trade Fair Centre in Accra during the launch of his ‘Changing Lives, Transforming Ghana’ tour.

The President’s reply to Dr Bawumia follows the former Deputy Bank of Ghana Governor's recent assertions that "reckless" borrowing by the Mahama administration will saddle Ghana with a total debt stock of nearly GHC100 billion by the end of the year.

"We’ll reach GHC99billion by the end of this year," the former Governor of the Bank of Ghana told journalists after Finance Minister Seth Terkper read the 2016 budget to Parliament on Friday.

"The interest on this debt alone is going to be six times Ghana’s oil revenue," Dr Bawumia said.

Dr Bawumia also accused the President of running a friends-and-family, as well as 'dumsor' and dead-goat economy.

In his response, however, President Mahama asked Dr Bawumia: "What do you know about competence?"

"All of them [NPP critics], in the offices they occupied, they should tell us what competence they displayed," Mr Mahama challenged.

"Anyway, my competence is not for them to judge, it’s for the people of Ghana to judge, and I know that come 7 November 2016, the people of Ghana will judge my competence, and they’ll give me a second term in office and the NDC will win another victory by the grace of almighty God," he said.

The PPP, however, is of the conviction that one does not need to have been a President before earning the right to rate the President’s performance.

"You don’t need to be the President of Ghana to feel the effect of the President’s ability to deliver," Mr Siaw said.

"When someone says that you are not competent, it is not an insult. It is a reflection of your ability to deliver the 'Better Ghana' agenda. We the citizens of Ghana are not impressed with the President’s level of performance, and we in the PPP consider his performance so far as incompetent and abysmal," he argued.