Veeps mostly economists, NDC’s candidate isn’t - Stephen Amoah

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Micro Finance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC), Stephen Amoah, has noted that a potential vice president more often than not has economics background to be able to manage the economy well.

He explained that the Vice President is the head of the Economic Management Team (EMT) therefore if that person has no idea about economics it will create problems for the government.

He was speaking on the New Day hosted by Johnnie Hughes on TV3 Wednesday, August 12 about the choice of educationist Professor Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang as the running mate to John Dramani Mahama ahead of this year’s elections.

Mr Amoah said that “you need a very competent running mate to an incompetent Mahama if he will be able to win” and not just because the appointee is a woman.

“The vice president is are mostly head of the economic management team of the country or the government but she is not an economist,” he said.

But reacting to this comment, a former Member of Parliament for Nandon, Ibrahim Murtala refuted the claims that a vice president must have an economics background.

He said, “Gender matters when we talk about politics and if you look at contemporary political discourse gender matters so much. You cannot improve the economic conditions of people without factoring in the interest and the need of women, more so in a country where we are told that women constitute the larger majority of the Ghanaian population. You cannot discuss economic issues without bringing in the gender factor.

“Who told you that in this country you must choose a running mate who has an economic background? I want to remind him that he should sincerely tell us that between the president Kufour administration and the present Nana Addo administration. Which one performed better?

“Every single rational NPP member will tell you that President Kufuor’s administration has performed better than this disaster we have as a government now under president Akufo-Addo. Under President Kufour his vice president was he an economist? No. He was a contractor.”