Dear Manasseh Azure Awuni,
I have read your beautifully crafted letter to your friend Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko in which you belligerently disagree with him over the comparison of the Akufo-Addo-led government to that of John Dramani Mahama.
You vehemently disagree that the hardships Ghanaians are facing today cannot be blamed on the events of yesterday, and upon that, you conclude that it is an admission that the Akufo-Addo administration has failed to live up to expectations.
You went about itemizing all the ills the NPP identified with the Mahama administration and the pledge to rectify same if candidate Akufo-Addo was entrusted with the mantle of leadership of the country in the 2016 elections.
You employ grandiloquent expressions and sometimes haughty words to sweep away whatever logical arguments Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko projected in his short but concise piece.
You also pontificate that Nana Akufo-Addo is failing to exhibit the qualities upon which you and many people voted for him. You insist that there hasn't been anything transformational and inspirational about President Akufo-Addo’s governance style so far.
You lament about the continuous existence of the gloomy clouds of corruption and hopelessness that dwelled in our midst under Mahama.
You also urge Mr. Otchere-Darko to stop irritating your ears with the numerous hymns about the corrupt acts which defined Mahama and his government because the Akufo-Addo administration has not done anything to prove that it is taking steps to deal with the culprits.
Manasseh, is it not strange that you weigh an 18-month old government against an 8-year old administration? It is the height of unfairness to compare the Akufo-Addo government that has been in power for less than two years with the NDC that chalked eight years in power!
With your level of intelligence, one would have expected that you would know that with the tattered nature of the economy as bequeathed to Akufo-Addo, you would not expect paradise in such a short period of time.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad a idea to ask you to plough through your archives and find out the number of articles you have written in praise of President Akufo-Addo over some key decisions. One of them was the appointment of Mr. Martin Amidu as the Special Prosecutor. In that piece, you mentioned, amongst other things, that President Akufo-Addo’s appointment of Mr. Amidu was not only a step in the right direction but also symbolic because he had appointed someone who abhors corruption and would help fight it.
This piece to Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko is, in all sincerity, parallel to what you said in the afore-described one you penned some months ago eulogizing His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
It is quite intriguing to read from you that comparing Nana Addo’s performance with that of Mahama is needless, but would you not agree that in the same letter to Gabby, you sought to draw lines between the Akufo-Addo administration and that of Mahama? How do you reconcile the two?
How do we know whether we are making progress or not if we should not look at events of yesterday? Comparing the present situation to the past in itself must not be seen as a tragedy.
Your fixation on corruption fails to garner support in that you wrote in a vacuum. You could not adduce any occurrence in this administration that smacks of corruption.
The Special Prosecutor is in town, and some of us would expect that you petition the office with acts of corruption so that the outfit can help all of us in dealing with that canker. Until you do that, shouting corruption without evidence would be considered irritating.
Did you say you don't see any difference between Mahama and President Akufo-Addo? Really? Let me refresh your memory with a fraction of the achievements of the Akufo-Addo Government in just eighteen months in office;
- Successful implementation of Free SHS.
- Implementation of National Digital Property Addressing System
- Nation Builders Corps (NABCO).
- Interoperability in the banking and mobile payment system.
- Fight against galamsey.
- Establiahment of the Office of the Special Prosecutor.
- National ID take off.
- Implementation of paperless port system.
- Implementation of Planting for Food and Jobs.
- Growth rate from 3.6 (lowest in 23 years) to 8 in 1 year.
- Restoration of Teacher Trainees Allowances.
- Restoration of Nursing Trainees Allowances.
- Reduction of inflation from inherited 16% to 10%.
- Reduction in the Policy Rate of the Bank of Ghana from inherited 26.5% to current 18%.
- Reduction of electricity bills.
- Reduction of budget deficit from 9.6% to about 6%.
- Reduction of debt to GDP ratio from 73% to 69.8%.
- Ongoing construction of Youth Resource Centres (including stadia) in the 10 regions.
- Abolishment ofnuisance taxes.
- Gross International Reserves increased to US$7.4B i.e. 4.1x of import cover.
- Payment of monies owed Road Contractors and NHIS Service Providers.
- Digitalization of Registrar General's department.
Manasseh, stop these emotive effusions and allow a bit of objectivity to determine what you write to your readers. Akufo-Addo is lots of distances above Mahama, and I am tempted to believe that deep in the hazy recesses of your mind, you know that President Akufo-Addo is far better than dethroned John Mahama.
Source: P.K.Sarpong/email: [email protected]
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....we are tired of the big grammar flying everywhere...
At least we have something to point finger to within 18 months of this young gov't.Can we say same to NDC?that's the difference,Manasseh.
WHO SAID NANA IS PRESIDENT TO PLEASE THE NDC ? NDC LIKE THE GRAVE WILL NEVER BE SATISFIED. THE BENEFICIARIES OF THE NDC CORRUPT RULE WILL NEVER VOTE FOR NANA AND THE NPP , THEY HAVE MISSED THEIR FREEBIES UNDER MAHAMA . FOR SUCH, THE SUCCESS OR OTHERWISE OF THE NPP GOVERNMENT DEPENDS ON THEIR FREEBIES TAKEN AWAY FROM THEM. NANA AND THE NPP SHOULD IGNORE THEM AND DO GOOD TO EVERY GHANAIAN RATHER. THEY WILL STILL VOTE NDC NO MATTER WHAT IS ACHIEVED UNDER THE NPP.
SURPRISINGLY THE NDC APOLOGIST AND BIGOT WHO SEES NOTHING WRONG WITH THE MAHAMA GOVERNMENT HAS FORGOTTEN THAT HE HAS ONLY ONE VOTE TOO. YOU AND YOUR COHORTS WILL HAVE THE SHOCK OF YOUR LIVES IN 2020. HATRED AND LIES, SETTING ONE TRIBE AGAINST ANOTHER WHICH IS THE TRADE MARK OF NDC CAMPAIGNS NO LONGER JIVES WITH THE GHANAIAN VOTER. THE ECONOMY IS THE SOLE TURF NOW. LETS WAIT AND SEE
HMMMM. After borrowing 45bn and over 112 bn budgetary monies in 18 month is that what npp can show? I shai sef
This is as a very good riposte to the baseless effusions from Manasseh and those who think like him. The argument that we should not compare Nana Addos's NPP administration with the previous Mahama NDC administration is in itself a very deficient argument. How can we choose between the two if we don't compare their performance??? And how can we show progress or otherwise of the current administration if we don't refer to the baseline (which is what was left by Mahama in 2016???) Someone left an econonmy in tatters - very high debt to GDP ratio, high budget deficit, high inflation, and very low GDP growth (3.6% in 2016). Another government comes and all the above indicators have improved significantly in 18 months, with GDP growth in 2017 at 8.5%. And yet you have people like Manasseh, making such baseless argument that nothing has changed??? Then, there is the noise about so-called corruption. That is the most pathetic of all. Where is the evidence of corruption? Shouting about what you claim to be corruption without any shred of evidence, is quite frankly, very silly. Take for example, the noise some of these people like Franklin Cudjoe and Manasseh have been making about the KelniGVG contract - calling it a scandal, and yet providing no evidence to back those claims except empty noise making in the media. Those who went to court over so-called privacy breaches, were thrown out by the judge, telling them they were peddling evidence-less fears among the populace. Nana Addo and Bawumia are on course to transform the country. It will take time but we will surely get there. Manasseh and his ilk should open their eyes!
I can't imagine how the minds of smart guys like us could be played on...GUYS WAKE UP, FOR THESE SMARTASS FOLKS ARE PLAYING GAMES WITH OUR MINDS.
Bam!I really like the response to Manasseh's letter. I thought Manasseh would compare President Nana Akufo Addo's government to that of Kwame Nkrumah. I've trying to reminisce about any landmark achievement by former President John Dramani Mahama's administration that is worth eulogizing but I cannot find any.All I could remember was inflated project costs (like that Circle Interchange), High Inflation,Use of public funds to to design a ***barred word*** green book to highlight non-existent infrastructure, buying cars for chiefs and some celebrities etc. All these epitomizes the incompetence nature of the NDC government. HIGHLIGHT MAHAMA'S ACHIEVEMENT FOR THIS NATION DURING HIS TENURE. And stop this innept comparison
It is one thing to list the so-called achievements as a propagandist and another thing evaluating them as a pragmatist. For those of us who are neither politicians nor their puppets it is mediocrity of the highest order and a slap in the face to think these are the reasons why Ghanaians voted for Nana! The writer has miraculously forgotten to list one of their flagship campaign promise: 1d1f. What happened to that? What about USD$1million to every constituency? Appointment of SP in and of itself means nothing in the fight against corruption. He has been in office for how long? How many cases of corruption has he prosecuted? Or there are no incidence of corruption again? It seems the appointment was more important than the fight so once that has been done sleeping dogs are let to lie! Ghana must be a joke. Free SHS,which is already fraught with so many issues is not a miracle given the quality of implementation we witnessed
When your agriculture sector the real sector of your economy, is in the negative territory in terms of growth, you don't expect to see a turn around in less than two years. When your finances have been soooo badly managed to the extent you have gone to invite the IMF to provide a bailout, technical expertise and confidence to your economy with all their cutthroat austerity measures which further constricts your ability to grow your economy, you don't expect to fix that in less than 2 years. When your health sector is soooo messed up to the extent, you have to drive a sitting President of this country to the maternity ward of a hospital, with the health sector workers, striking every day, nurses and other auxiliary staff, made redundant, cushions for their training yanked from underneath them, all of which further depresses the quality of healthcare delivery in the country, you don't expect it to be resolved in 2 years. When corruption has soooo collapsed the country, to the extent, almost 90-95% of revenue streams are used to service debt, which was looted, instead of being intelligently and judiciously used for the purposes for which it was contracted, with the looted funds sitting out there is assets and accounts, you don't expect that to be fixed in 2 years. When your environment, water bodies and land is sooooo degraded to the extent, the water you drink is as turbid as anything could be, necessitating more funds to treat it, etc, etc, you don't expect it to be fixed in 2 years. And the list goes on and on and on. Ghana and Ghanaians as well as Africa, have great hope in the administration of the Akufo Addo gov't, and the bold, resolute and robust steps, it has taken and continues to take, and the solid path it has taken to deliver on progress and prosperity for the people of Ghana, and are totally and fully convinced consistency is what would deliver the gains so far chalked and would reward the Akufo Addo NPP political party with a consistent platform for the next 50 years to deliver on the great agenda of Ghana and by extension, Africa. And talking of corruption, the bell has tolled with the Board of the Special Prosecutor's Office in place and double salary saga looters of Ghana, referred to the AG's Department. They will vomit Ghanaians looted monies in this country.