....... Over APRM report
YOUNG NEW PATRIOTIC Party (NPP), firebrand, Mr. Jonh Boadu, has launched a scathing assault on the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) for what he termed as the penchant of the party to insult eminent personalities in the country at any given opportunity.
In an exclusive interview with the GYE NYAME CONCORD in reaction to the NDC?s press conference on the African Peer Review Mechanism report, he said the main opposition party was also becoming notorious for shooting down any good omen that befalls this country.
According to the NPP Youth Treasurer, the NDC went ballistic on the religious leaders who tried to advise former President Rawlings from what they realised was unsavory remarks he had made about President Kufuor.
Again when the Chairman of the Petroleum Tender Board, Prof. Addai Mensah said government was subsidising petroleum products during the period government wanted to increase petrol price, John Boadu opined that the NDC insulted him, forgetting that he was once the respected Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Legon.
The most recent one he further argued was the NDC?s response to claims by Prof. S. K. Agyepong, Chairman of the country APRM Committee and Prof Gyimah-Boadi of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) that the APRM report was not a judgement of the Kufuor administration but one on both the NPP and NDC regimes.
?They should stop insulting professors, religious leaders and our eminent men and start arguing them rather to get the best out for this country?, he said.
He said there was no logic in the NDC?s argument that government must take credit for both the positive and negative aspects of the report, describing it as quite elementary and absurd.
The NDC at their press conference a little over a week ago said the APRM report was a report on the performance of President Kufuor and his NPP government and that they should take credit for both the positives and the negatives and quickly do something about the negatives.
?These people always try to find fault with anything that come in praise of the NPP administration?, he stressed, maintaining that this NEPAD initiative should rather encourage everybody to open ourselves up for others to praise or criticise us.
According to John Boadu, the NDC?s press conference was premature, ill-timed and uncalled for, especially when government has not been given the opportunity to officially come out with a blueprint on the report.
?An unexamined life is not worth living?, he noted, saying it was high time as Ghanaians we learn to celebrate our victories and, unlike the NDC, try to live above pettiness.
Obviously surprised by the stance taken by the main opposition party, he said ?I don?t know where the NDC is getting their facts from? and that ?for a government in this sub-region to submit itself under such circumstances must be highly commended?.
He said if a country like the United States was to submit itself to an APRM, people would realise the kind of revelations which would come out of it.
To him government has a responsibility to draw a plan of action to address the negatives in the report but at a cost, something he thought the Kufuor administration would be given the time and the chance to do.
He said looking at the NDC?s responses to the proposed 80 percent debt write-off of Ghana and the Peoples Representative Bill currently before Parliament show a party that has nothing good to offer this country anymore except to pooh-pooh any praise of the Kufuor administration.
