Stop creating personality cult for Akufo-Addo – Ablakwa to Government

Ranking Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a former deputy Minister of Education, is cautioning the government to as a matter of urgency to abort the personality cult it sought to create in the 2018 budget.

On page 143, the Minister for Finance introduced a program called the Akufo-Addo program for Economic transformation.

On page 184, is also the introduction of a new intervention called His Excellency Nana Addicted Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s plans for agricultural roads.

Such act, he noted, happens only under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, and that must be stopped immediately.

The North Tongu lawmaker made this observation when he took his turn to debate the 2018 budget and economic policy statement on the floor of Parliament, Thursday.

Hon. Okudzeto Ablakwa noted that this tendency was not witnessed under Presidents, Rawlings, Attah Kufour, Mills, and Mahama for which reason it must not be entertained.

“Akufo-Addo Programme for Economic Transformation, His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s Plan for Agriculture Roads, Please! Mr Speaker, this is what Nikita Khrushchev defines as the personality cult. This personality cult that we’re trying to create in the 2018 budget must be aborted immediately. This is a democracy, we want our projects to be nationally owned, let us all work together to make projects work. This business of trying so hard to name projects after the President when he’s even yet to deliver.

He added “what happens in this country is when you deliver and the people appreciate it that you’ve delivered, they’ll name it after you. Like we named the yellow Mass Transit buses after President Kufour, because he delivered, like the way the Community Day Schools are being called Mahama schools because he delivered. It was never put in the budget that Mahama Community Day schools. Let us stop the personality cult and get to work, fortunately the theme for this year’s budget is putting Ghana back to work I think the executive has had enough of this game. Sloganeering, authoritarian and totalitarian tendencies will not take us anywhere.”