Bawumia’s vision is "a repeat using a decoy to disguise a similar cajoling vision the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia team presented to the Ghanaian electorate at the 2016 elections," says citizen vigilante Martin Amidu.
The Vice President and flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, on Wednesday, February 7, at an event at UPSA outlined his policies saying he will abolish the Electronic Levy (E-Levy) and other taxes, improve the mining sector by giving certain incentives to encourage legal mining and boost the sector, make National Service optional, streamline the passport office to make passports easily accessible, introduce digital initiatives to revamp the tourism sector among others.
Analyzing the Veep's vision policy in an article, the former Special Prosecutor said it's "no different in form and substance from the deceptive vision team Akufo-Addo/Bawumia presented even at the 2020 elections when economic situations were exceedingly difficult. These visions have always been founded upon promises to ameliorate the harsh tax conditions the private sector and ordinary Ghanaians are facing daily in the marketplace".
"I have read Bawumia’s vision several times since I had time to do so after delivering my keynote address at the University for Development Studies on 8 February 2024 and he comes out to me like a copycat replica of the style and deceptive persuasiveness deployed by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in winning the 2016 presidential elections only to renege on all the promises he made on taxes, use of natural resources for the benefits of the ordinary Ghanaian, the right of citizens to speak up and not be spectators: and above all the unprecedented unfulfilled plan and leadership commitment to fight corruption" portions of Martin Amidu's article read.
Below is his full article
Defending the 1992 Constitution: “A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within…A murderer is less to fear.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero.
I have read line by line and paragraph by paragraph Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia’s seventy-three (73) page paper he delivered at the University of Professional Studies, Accra on 7 February 2024 outlining his vision for Ghana should the Ghanaian electors give him the mandate to succeed incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo as the President of Ghana on 7 January 2024: contrary to statements and criticisms about his vision for Ghana that I have read on the electronic media since 7 February 2024, I have been unable to objectively find any betrayal of President Akufo Addo or the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in Bawumia’s published vision for Ghana.
Bawumia owned up to being an integral part of the Nana Akufo-Addo’s government of family, friends, cronies, associates, and looters and attempts to reclaim credit for a messy economic situation that sent the country to the IMF when he says on page 40 of his vision that:
“107. What we have been able to accomplish so far shows that Ghana can achieve many things that some believe to be impossible. It is possible if we put our minds to it. We need to break the shackles of impossibility and embrace the mindset of possibility.”
All that an objective reader needs to do is to refer to the historical materials and the promises made by the Nana Akufo-Addo/Bawumia 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns and she/he would realise what either Nana Akufo-Addo or Mahamudu Bawumia mean when they deployed the rhetoric of the impossibility becoming possible. The ordinary Ghanaian just has to assess his economic conditions today, the loss in savings and income that the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia joint promises and management have unleashed on the gullible electorate that swallowed hook, line, and sinker the demagogic and messianic deception of the electorate that voted to bring the pair to power at the polls in 2016 and 2020.
I have read Bawumia’s vision several times since I had time to do so after delivering my keynote address at the University for Development Studies on 8 February 2024 and he comes out to me like a copycat replica of the style and deceptive persuasiveness deployed by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in winning the 2016 presidential elections only to renege on all the promises he made on taxes, use of natural resources for the benefits of the ordinary Ghanaian, the right of citizens to speak up and not be spectators: and above all the unprecedented unfulfilled plan and leadership commitment to fight corruption.
Bawumia’s vision is a repeat using a decoy to disguise a similar cajoling vision the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia team presented to the Ghanaian electorate at the 2016 elections. It is no different in form and substance from the deceptive vision team Akufo-Addo/Bawumia presented even at the 2020 elections when economic situations were exceedingly difficult. These visions have always been founded upon promises to ameliorate the harsh tax conditions the private sector and ordinary Ghanaians are facing daily in the marketplace.
Nana Akufo-Addo was my worthy colleague at the Bar with whom I sparred in many landmark cases. I had profound respect for his integrity as a lawyer and a colleague to the extent that I lost my sense of critical assessment of him as a demagogue politician desperate to wield the presidential power for brute power’s sake and not as an instrument for the common good of citizens as enjoined under the 1992 Constitution. So many Ghanaians were taken in by Nana Akufo-Addo’s presentation of self as capable of leading one of the most incorruptible governments after 7 January 2017. The converse reality is now pertinent for all electors to assess and make their own decisions and tell their lived experience of how demagogues and messianic leaders of the likes of team Akufo-Addo and Mahamudu Bawumia deceive the unsuspecting electorates for their votes only to unremorsefully abandon them to a life of the worst economic sufferings as we witness daily in Ghana today.
Bawumia’s vision makes no pretensions of distancing him from the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia visions for the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Bawumia only refines the rhetoric by promising to reform the most hated tax measures under the incumbent government likely to affect his fortunes at the 2024 elections by cleverly suggesting the possibility of eventually eliminating the hated taxes through an untested tax policy that will make “it possible for the elimination of some taxes such as the VAT on electricity, the emission tax, and the betting tax without compromising our deficit target.” The contingent conditions and context of feasibility for this vision in Bawumia’s own words on page 48 of the Bawumia vision are: “The new policies that I am proposing to implement in 2025 will give us the fiscal space to eliminate some taxes such as the VAT on electricity, the emission tax and the betting tax without compromising our deficit target.”
The context of the likely elimination of those taxes is clearly stated in Bawumia’s vision dependent on new tax policies, just as the team Akufo-Addo/Bawumia pair used the rhetoric of no new taxes and the natural resources for the benefit of Ghanaians' vision to secure the votes at the 2016 election particularly, and also at the disputed 2020 elections in which innocent citizens died. The impression created by critics and commentators of Bawumia’s vision that he distanced himself from the draconian E-Levy is not borne out by my reading of the Bawumia vision document. Bawumia has been so associated with Nana Akufo-Addo that he has developed the unconscious mimicking of Akufo-Addo’s rhetoric and demagogic/messianic style of taking the electorate for granted as yokels.
The abolition of e-levy is contingent on the economy moving towards a cashless economy and the use of electronic channels of payments that will make taxes on digital payments unnecessary under his vision (see page 63 thereof). The VAT on electricity, the emission tax, the betting tax, and the e-levy were taxes forced down the throat of the electorate with the support of the minority in parliament and our Almighty Transactional Speaker who hunts the NPP in the coming 2024 elections. I would have been surprised if Bawumia did not mimicked Nana Akufo-Addo’s campaign rhetoric in trying to convince Ghanaians of the possibility of eliminating them as part of his vision once elected. The electorate has experienced seven years of deception under the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government to decide whether as first fools and second fools they wish to become the third fools who indeed will be the real fools at the 2024 elections.
The Bawumia vision is in accordance with the team Akufo-Addo/Bawumia refrain in which they used the cover of the COVID pandemic and the Russian-Ukraine war to introduce draconian and unconstitutional laws including executive instruments to loot the national purse for their friends, family, cronies, and associates in the name of COVID testing at ports
of entry and other social interventions that never reached the ordinary Ghanaian. In the same copycat manner, Bawumia parrots Akufo-Addo’s vision and voice, and for geopolitical comprador reasons disingenuously leaves out the effect of Israel’s mayhem on innocent Palestinians. As a Muslim, Bawumia is so bent on coming to power that he is distancing himself from the Israeli/Gaza war and its genocidal consequences on the poor Arabs of all faiths suffering the excesses of the Netanyahu madness against all Palestinians. South Africa has shown Bawumia the way to follow the innocent deaths in Palestine as a true African which he cannot follow for geopolitical reasons should the 2024 elections be stolen for him as was done for the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa za Banga of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) for years.
Bawumia’s vision like the team Akufo-Addo/Bawumia’s squandered vision in the past seven years is to use the benchmark of a skewed performance of the NDC Government between 2013 and 2016 as the battering ram of success and a promise for a better future. I came away with the impression that the Bawumia vision, like the team Akufo-Addo/Bawumia vision for the 2016 and 2020 elections, is unable to show its achievement independent of the past which they promised to eradicate.
Bawumia’s vision of eradicating corruption using digitization is so naïve when compared to the continued discovery of corruption within China which has an advanced digital and cashless system than Ghana whose illiterate and semi-literate population negates the Bawumia vision of all-round digitisation. The population of Ghanaians registered for the Ghana Card according to Bawumia’s analysis shows the challenges of achieving his vision.
In any case, the government which had the prescience to licence and encourage Mobitel (now Airtel/Tigo) and Scancom (now MTN) ought to be taking credit for today’s digitization and not the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia regimes. Well-kept archival records in Ghana will show the letters from the Public Agreements Board that facilitated the establishment of Mobitel and Scancom when I was the Chairman of the Public Agreements Board under the PNDC regime and how these developed under the NDC 1 and 2 regimes with the roles Captain Tsikata, and Alhaji Mumuni Bawumia, the two-term NDC Chairman of the Council of State played in actualizing what are the telecom networks in Ghana today.
As Ghana gets closer to the 2024 election season the NPP and the NDC are deploying various deceptive tools to win over the electorate whom they will each forget after securing the votes of the electorate to come to power for the next three years until the next election year. The 2024 elections should be won by facts and projections with high degrees of probability for actualization. Unfortunately, every day one just hears promise upon promise from the two major political parties without any demonstrable ability to implement those promises once elected to power.
The political elite from various political parties see the election season as a period of deception instead of canvassing for votes on proven records and achievements. This is the period for selfless constitutional activists whose political party is Ghana and the 1992 Constitution to expose the chicanery and deceptions being deployed to secure votes only to abandon the electorate to their fate once the winner assumes power. Ghana must always come first!
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
February 15, 2024
Source: Peacefmonline.com
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. |
KB@Koku, your last response has simplified the whole point and it doesn't differ from what KB said. If Dr. Bawumia says that he isn't a decision maker in this government, that doesn't mean other government officials have not been decision makers of a sort. I'm sure Mr. Ofori Atta will not the same. Also, Dr. Bawumiah is by that admitting that every policy or idea that has been developed in this government (good or bad) was decided by Nana Addo or others if there are any. So why are you people struggling to credit so called digitalisation gains to Dr? Per what you have said, Nana conceived his vision in the digital space and assigned Dr. to spearhead the implementation but in this one, you guys exclude Nana Addo entirely, what kind of academic dishonesty is that? Well, this is not strange in the NPP that I once revered, we saw Nana's inauguration speech plagiarizing verbatim another person's sayings, maybe karma has now done justice to Nana😂
@koku, Bawumia didn't say that he has no say in Nana Addo's government, so Koku don't twist it and deceive Ghanaians. What Bawumia said is that he is not the final decision-maker in Nana Addo's government and he can only offer an advice. Bawumia went on to provide the work entrusted to him by Nana Addo, that is, digitisation and what he did is there for every Ghanaian to see. To be truthfully, Dr Bawumia has been impactful and he did his job well, unlike Amidu. Listen to me, Koku. Amidu's work was defined by the Act that established Office of the Special Prosecutor. He was a decision-maker unlike Dr Bawumia with no one directing him as to what to do. However, Amidu failed woefully and run away with taxpayers' money. Amidu should not be trusted, period. Amidu is a talkative and does little. He is irrelevant and should not be taken seriously.
@ KTR, I like my distant friend KTR, he'll sacrifice everyone including himself to "protect" Bawumia, meanwhile the man Bawumia is not protectable due to his "loud or okro" mouth and contradictory deeds. My question though is what has Bawumia corrected after deciding to stay? The man has told us recently that he himself is aware that he hasn't fulfilled the many promises that he gave to Ghanaians simply because he is currently the mate and not the driver who makes the decisions. But even though he (Bawumia) doesn't regret it, he's learnt that we (Ghanaians ) are so generous that we empower people even when it's so glaring that they don't mean what they say except to take advantage of our unique predicament and secure our power to satisfy their selfish desires, so we should consider him one more time and this time round, he promises to reverse most of the things his boss has done to inflict so much pain on us. Yooo we have heard you, KTR and your Saint Perfectionist Genius Economist Dr. Bawumia!
Problem with Amidu is that because Nana Addo failed him he has painted everyone associated with Nana Addo us untrustworthy. But that is his loss because in doing that he misses the opportunity to see Bawumia’s clear vision for the country and to support it. Bawumia himself is a victim of Nana Addo cunning ways. Because Bawumia gave him the best of advice with the hope that he will implement it. But Nana Addo did not. Bawumia unlike Amidu decided to stay in and correct things. You Amidu did run like a scared dog. Keep running and don’t come back to bark when you could have stayed and corrected things
This man again. Jealousy will kill him. He is bitter. He could not praise Bawumia for all the innovation in the digitilisarion work. He hates his own northern brothers. Disgusting old f00l. ***barred word***. You are no longer relevant.
@KB, but Bawumia said as a mate, he has no say in Nana Addo's government, how much more a special prosecutor? For Amidu, perhaps, he had a personal integrity to protect so he ran away earlier and spared Ghana on wasting huge budgets on him. Instead, Bawumia had nothing to lose so he stayed without making any serious impact in government yet causing huge financial loss to the state. As rightly pointed out by Antwi, these 2 gentlemen have the same problem, but in terms of sparing the public purse and one's personal integrity, Martin Amidu took a positive step whiles Bawumia didn't, so between the 2 of them, who is better?
Amidu is a funny guy. He still thinks that Ghanaians trust him. No one trust him. He took taxpayers' money in the form of salary and run away on flimsy excuse. If this is not corruption, Amidu, what is this?
IS THIS CHARACTER STILL TAKING. GOD HAVE MERCY ON GHANA. EMPTY BARREL ALWAYS MAKE THE MOST NOISE. ***barred word***………..
Is anyone reading this guys thesis? You were given a job you were not able to do and run away and making use11ess noise. Even your party NDC doesn't want you again. Confused man. Continue to write your long essays.
@Dan and Kofi Ntosu, whatever you are saying about Amidu can be said of Bawumia. The latter has consistently portrayed himself as the smartest and most intelligent politician, yet you find that convenient. Bawumia critised Amissah Arthur as though he wasn't even an economist, when he Bawumia got the position and messed up, he said the vice presidential position has no authority to do anything important for the nation. Essentially, he meant that Nana is the one who is responsible for the mess. Again, he said he has the best ideas so if we vote for him, he will reverse all of Nana Addo's ideas and implement his own which would be the best for our nation. So you have Bawumia who has critisised even the man who brought him into politics and made him the flag bearer of NPP. How can you find Bawumiah's "immaculate" and pontificating attitude as ok and turn around to criticise Amidu? Are you really ok?