Director of Finance and Administration of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Hon. Opare Hammond, has called on Ghanaians to take their political responsibilities seriously, as that is the only way of enhancing their well being. According to him, until Ghanaians strive to understand the multi party democratic practice in the country, and hold politicians accountable to their promises, they will always be taken for granted.
Hon. Opare Hammond was commenting on the NDC’s reaction to criticisms by the NPP on the state of the national economy.
It will be recalled that following proposals by the Mahama administration to introduce a number of taxes on various items including cutlasses, condoms, and “pure water”, in order to salvage the nation’s cash-strapped economy, the opposition NPP held a series of press conferences on the state of the economy, highlighting the mismanagement of national resources through unjustifiable overspending, dubious judgment debt payments, and questionable investments in projects such as guinea fowl rearing and tree planting exercises. The NDC government since then has responded by lambasting the NPP for “politicizing” a purely economic issue.
But describing the NDC’s response as disingenuous, Hon. Opare Hammond, who is also the former NPP MP for the Adentan Constituency, emphasized, that the current state of the economy is very much a political matter. He explained that the state of the economy at any time is only a reflection of policies and programmes that are implemented by the political leadership of the country, in this case President John Mahama.
“Politics is about electing an individual who is presented to the people by a Political Party, to manage their human and financial resources. At the end of the day, the person who is elected president is charged with the responsibility of formulating and effectively executing policies which will ensure that the resources generated by the people through the payment of taxes will be used judiciously, to enhance their livelihood. It is the feedback of implementing these policies and programmes by the political leader, which will be reflected in the lives of the people”, he said.
He recalled how President Kufuor through political authority, formulated and implemented pro-poor policies like the NHIS, School Feeding programme, Capitation Grant, L.E.A.P. and the Metro Mass Transport Service, all of which, political leadership under President Mahama, has run down.
He criticized President Mahama for failing to curb corruption by blocking leakages in the economy while adapting the easy way out by imposing more taxes on “virtually everything under the sun”. “President Mahama can collect all the taxes he wants, but if he continues to look on while Ministries, Departments and Agencies, continue to spend monies outside their budget with virtually nothing to show for it, then no matter how much money the Ghanaian contributes to the national kitty, he will come back again to complain that the meat is down to the bone”, he stressed.
The NPP stalwart decried the practice of supporting and voting for political leaders along ethnic, religious and traditional lines, at the expense of competency. He urged Ghanaians to move away from the era of “Political Party Fanaticism”, to the era of choosing a leader with “brain power”, cautioning, that the rippling effect of incompetent and corrupt political leadership is not selectively applicable to supporters and sympathizers of a particular political party.
The former MP also advised his fellow politicians to take the political profession seriously by ensuring that they fulfill their political promises to the electorate, warning that it is in nobody’s interest that Ghanaians will be cynical about politics.
