NDC – We are not working

- This gravy train must end

By Kwesi Atta-Krufi Hayford

Throughout our history as a nation we have all grown and prospered when we all share

in the opportunities open to us through the advancement of our economy. The hard

working Ghanaian believes that when the environment is empowering they will be able

to take advantage of the situation to feed their family and raise their children

with security, opportunity and hope for a better future. In the eight years of

President Kufuor’s administration, this aspiration became real through his pragmatic

and common sense approach to managing our economy and our social lives.

I have written elsewhere that December 2008 marked the real watershed in Ghana’s

political choices. As Ghanaians we were confronted with a clear choice whether to

move forward with the New Patriotic Party who promised to deepen democracy and

modernize our society or go back to and with the National Democratic Congress who

promised change and a “better Ghana” without laying any clear ingredients for that.

As a nation we chose to go with the latter, a decision which is well respected yet

sadly wrong on all fours.

Ghanaians had had the opportunity to see the two parties in government and indeed

there were clear differences in the respective parties’ records in government. There

were differences in their respective past performances; there were differences in

their respective visions for the future and there were differences in the

presidential candidates of the parties. For me and quite simplistically it was a

choice between gangsterism and freedom and the people chose the former.

Almost two years in government, the NDC is yet to roll out any ground breaking

programme to support its “better Ghana” agenda. After spending a good two years

fighting everyone from NPP to Kosmos and United States of America, the government

decides to bring us the atrociously scandalous, bribe ridden STX Korea housing deal.

The government has in its maiden programme abandoned their social democratic

credentials to protect the special interests of a Korean company with tax breaks

and holidays and ignore the interest of Ghanaian companies in GREDA that are Ghana’s

backbone and the engine of our economic growth.

Today real jobs are disappearing and phantom ones (1.6 million Ablakwa jobs) are

emerging. We are yet to realise the blue print for job creation that the President

promised us at the beginning of the year. Our nest eggs are cracking as bread

winners are being sent home in droves from job losses. Ghana International Airlines

have just laid off 140 of their staff. Jobs in NHIS, NYEP, and MMT are falling like

dominoes.

The real cost of health care has gone through the roof as the NHIS has crumbled.

Hospitals are opting out and the Ghana Medical Council is shouting but their voices

are drowned by the daily superficial childish airwaves effusions of Anita de-Souza,

Okudzeto Ablakwa, and Hanna Bisiw - The Minister for Unnecessary Affair. In every

country governments are taking advantage of the revolutions of technology and

communication to open new avenues for business and investment and yet only in Ghana,

the government uses this opportunity to insult and intimidate.

The credit crunch that entangled the world is gradually easing. The G8 is beginning

to re-draw the new post recession global order and our government is so laid back

and still engaged in cold war effusions with Kosmos and Vodafone. Our President has

not even enquired into where the G-20 meets and let alone know what they are

discussing. Ghana is being cut adrift in the new world order and our inferiority

complex in the comity of nations is beginning to explain why we have to give both

sovereign guarantee to STX to find a loan to invest in our country and insure the

loan at the same time. The motive of the government in bringing STX back to

parliament in a circuitous route through the press is not to enhance its better

Ghana agenda but to get to NPP sense of jealousy. How very petty. It is seen as an

anti NPP programme

In an economy which is on auto pilot it is the creativity and resilience of the

Ghanaian that is driving the economy. It is amazing that every time there is an

announcement that inflation had dropped, the paragraph of the announcement quotes

the Ghana statistical Services and the second paragraph quotes the Governor of the

bank of Ghana. It smacks of a staged announcement with a motive of self praise by

the NDC. Nobody is against lower inflation but in an economy where very little

economic activity takes place, it is only likely that inflation will drop and the

rate at which public expenditure is so low it will not be long before we head

towards deflation. Again in 1999 the NDC government recorded a 9.9% inflation and

yet a year on it had reached a whopping 40.5%.

This NDC administration has abandoned its social democratic credentials and has

adopted the discredited philosophy of trickle-down economics that believes that big

tax breaks for the wealthiest and foreign companies like STX Korea will work its way

to all. In the much discredited STX deal, they have given massive tax holiday to the

company while in the local award of contracts they have abandoned the Procurement

Act and allowed NDC lobbyists to rig the game for their members. As we have seen in

the last nineteen months or so, this has failed. The jobs have not come and the

agitations from their own camp have grown louder. The government operatives have

quietly pointed their foot soldiers to toilet seizures, car seizures, office

seizures, road and tool booth seizures, car park seizures and yet their agitations

have not gone away. This is because deep in their hearts they know the government is

getting paid for doing nothing.

They have sacrificed the critical investments the nation has made in our health care

by playing unnecessary political games with the NHIS. Five years after its

implementation, the stop-go attitude of the NDC means that we are going to start all

over again in 2011, and yet Ametor Kwami, its propaganda chief doe not even though

the blue print for the 2011 one-time premium.

By abandoning the investments and strides we have made in education, energy, public

transport and public infrastructure to pay for hundred of thousands of dollars in

insurance premium on STX loans and in tax breaks; by abandoning all the fiscal

responsibility and forcing our country to go back to the IMF and world bank with

their attendant conditionalities, they are leaving our children to foot the bill. By

squeezing the average Ghanaian and making it harder for business people to get

credit to expand the economy, by growing the economy down from 7.3% to 5.9% in one

year, this government has walked away from its better Ghana promised into the sunset

of shame.

The NPP has a very different vision –one that will move the nation forward and once

again put Ghana at the cutting edge of global economy. After August 7 the road will

be clear and the NDC will begin to know our game plan to get the economy working

again, create jobs and drive up economic growth from 2012.

Insha Allah, the gravy train will surely end.

Kwesi Atta-Krufi, Hayford