Ruling party debunks opposition manifesto

The ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) Thursday condemned the New Patriotic Party (NPP) manifesto as a document full of policies stolen from the NDC, lies, insults and unrealistic promises.

The attack is contained in a 56-page document published by the NDC entitled "The NPP Manifesto - A Set of Stolen Policies". The NPP had labelled its manifesto for the December 7 election as "Agenda for Positive Change". Reading the document at a press conference in Accra, NDC Manifesto Committee Chairman Kwamena Ahwoi said a third of the NPP manifesto is devoted to an attack on the NDC, its leadership and membership.

"The manifesto sets out to insult the NDC in a language that is uncouth, indecent, provocative and inflammatory. "Meanwhile, the NDC manifesto never made mention of any party. The electorate must compare the language of the two manifestos and judge which party is in for reconciliation." The NPP is campaigning against the NDC as a corrupt government with a legacy of stagnating the development of the economy through poor education, health and socio-economic policies and mismanagement of state funds. If elected the next government, the NPP pledges to turn the economy around and improve the welfare of the people. Among the six parties challenging the NDC, the NPP is given the best chance of winning.

Mr. Ahwoi said more than half of the policies and programmes in the NPP manifesto are policies and programmes contained in the NDC manifesto and are already being pursued by the ruling government. "These are policies that the NPP have hypocritically criticised and yet they pretend as if they are going to be the originators of these policies in their imaginary overnment," he said.

Ahwoi listed such NDC policies and programmes in the NPP manifesto as tax identification numbers, ECOWAS monetary union, government partnership with private sector, neighbourhood watch scheme, prison farms, and additional roles to armed forces in national development, among others. Ahwoi also said the NPP manifesto falsifies historical records with regards to the brief period that their forebears, the Progress Party (PP), were in power from 1969 to 1972.

"The manifesto mixes fiction and facts in its call for change in the management of the economy," he said. He said the NPP's assertions about Ghana's poverty and illiteracy rates, as well as levels of income and the state of the economy, are misleading. "Records are available to show that there has been tremendous improvement in these areas over the past 30 years." Ahwoi said though the NPP makes noise about criminal libel laws, its manifesto is silent on the issue. He said the NPP is also silent on information technology, tax policy and on the issue of regional balance in military recruitment.

It rather contains either stolen policies of the NDC, insults or very unrealistic policy proposals, some of which are poised to make the economy run into trouble." Ahwoi said the NPP manifesto confirms the charges of elitism and intellectual pomposity often levelled against the NPP.

He said in principle, an electoral manifesto is a written covenant, embodying policies and programmes by which a political party tries to convince the electorate to give the party the mandate to govern. "Within the context of this conventional understanding, the NPP manifesto reads more like a political propaganda document than presentation of viable policies and programmes for informed electorate choice," he said. Ahwoi said apart from the NDC policies and programmes, which the NPP has plagiarised, its proposal of an investment fund, politicising the district assembly system as against its promise to give chiefs and women 30 per cent quota, among others, are unrealistic and contradictory.

He called on the electorate to take a critical look at the manifestos of the various parties and vote for change in continuity. Ahwoi challenged the NPP to respond to the critique of its manifesto by the NDC.