Mahama's changing lives tour is an abuse of incumbency

President John Dramani Mahama is engaging in an abuse of incumbency with his changing lives tour. The changing lives tour is purely an NDC campaign ahead of the 2016 elections.

The PPP has no qualms if the NDC, led by the president, will travel around the country to try in vain to demonstrate that they have done something better for Ghana, but this extravagant activity should not be done at the expense of the tax payer. The tour has witnessed the busing of NDC supporters from various constituencies to regional capital to shore up support for a president whose most remarkable record is dumsor or the lack of sufficient energy to power this country's growth for the past four years. The president has been campaigning and defending his record and asking for a second term for the NDC. This cannot be a government activity.

He has also ordered Ministers of State, MMDCEs and other government officials to attend these partisan rallies using our helicopters, land cruisers, fuel and money.

During this tour, the question of the president's competence in governing this country has come to the fore. We wish to assure the president and the NDC that this matter is not debatable. The president has demonstrated enough incompetence in solving the energy crisis which deadline for resolution has been moved by him from December, 2015 to before the 2016 elections, incidentally during this taxpayer sponsored NDC campaign.

In fact, by ignoring your responsibility of governing this country and engaging in this fruitless tour is enough justification for the hash tag #incompetentmahama# to be adapted from now until November 2016.

The blatant abuse of incumbency to fund party campaign is one of the major causes of our current economic crisis. President Mahama presided over the huge budget deficit in 2012 to win power and the NDC has not learnt any lessons from this practice. We cannot therefore trust the Finance Minister when he indicated in his budget statement that there will be no budget overruns in 2016.

This abuse of incumbency creates an uneven playing field for other political parties and it must be addressed before the 2016 elections. Getting an opportunity to govern is not a license to spend our tax money recklessly in the pursuit of party agenda for victory. We call on CODEO and the Electoral Commission to institute measures that will prevent the president from abusing his office to win an election to the disadvantage of other legitimate political parties.

Free and fair elections do not happen on Election Day; in fact abuse of incumbency constitutes rigging of the electoral process and this must stop!

Murtala Mohammed

National Secretary