- 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
