Tarzan Pooh-Poohs Budget: It’s Oburoni Waawu

Dr Charles Wereko-BrobbyIf Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, the Finance Minister, had presented the government’s 2010 Budget as the thesis for his well-earned Doctorate degree, the examiners would have thrown it out and charged him with plagiarism, says former Chief Executive of the Ghana @ 50 Secretariat, Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobby, aka Tarzan.

Dr. Wereko-Brobby has likened the said Budget to a piece of second-hand clothing commonly referred to as “oburoni wawu” and is claiming further that the two Budget Statements announced by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government since it assumed office in January this year is a carbon copy of the policies and deeds of the government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) from 2001-2008.

“Let me state for the record that unlike others in the NDC hierarchy, the Dr. Kwabena Duffuor I have known for many years is not one that will lend himself knowingly to plagiarism.

However, I also do know that he is one that will concede and accept good ideas and solutions even if they did not originate from him or his fellow bedmates.

“So it is that my dear brother finds himself in the uncomfortable and incongruous position of having to represent the policies of the NPP government, which his now NDC bedfellows had condemned vigorously and violently in opposition, as the magic wand of change that would bring about a better Ghana,” Dr. Wereko-Brobby, stated in a 2127-worded thesis he has authored on Ghana’s 2010 Budget Statement.

His thesis has it that “the substance of the charge of the plagiarism of the 2010 Budget Statement starts from the very theme chosen for it, ‘Growth and Stability’, which is nothing more than a cryptic form of the theme of the 2007 Budget of the NPP government, titled ‘Growth within the environment of Stability’.

“Once the thesis is copied, what follows is nothing short of policy for policy regurgitation of what the NPP government had already begun in its tenure in office.

For example, the flagship social programme announced in the 2010 Budget and the provision of proper classrooms for children currently studying under trees, are projects that were introduced in 2004 by the late