<<Print>>

HISTORY WAS made Saturday afternoon at Techiman in the Brong Ahafo region, as all human activities in the town came to a standstill when New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo stormed the town to hold his last rally in the region. The huge crowd that greeted the NPP flagbearer has been described as unprecedented in the history of any political gathering in the municipality and any part of the Brong Ahafo region. Thousands of people thronged the Techiman Methodist School Park while hundreds took over the major streets and the main Techiman-Kumasi Highway which was virtually blocked from vehicular use as a result of human traffic. DAILY GUIDE saw one middle-aged woman who broke into tears of joy because according to her, Techiman, a stronghold of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), has finally fallen into the hands of the NPP. To Professor Christopher Ameyaw-Akumfi, a royal of Techiman and NPP parliamentary candidate for Techiman North, the massive crowd which came from within the Techiman Municipality gave a clear signal of a landslide victory for the NPP in both the presidential and parliamentary elections. Nana Akufo-Addo himself expressed surprise at the huge turnout, describing it as unprecedented and thanked the people for the massive support for his presidential ambition. He charged the people of the region to join the rest of the country to vote out the visionless Mahama-led NDC government which has plunged Ghana into untold hardships in the past four years. �Come Friday we will use our thumbs to vote out this incompetent, corrupt NDC government to give way for a visionary, competent NPP government to bring relief to the suffering masses of our country,� Akufo-Addo stated to a charged cheering crowd. Mahama Against Pro-Poor Policies Nana Addo stated that President John Mahama and the NDC have always kicked against anything that will bring respite to the poor in Ghana because they do not have the interest of the poor at heart. He explained that the president and the NDC have spent all their campaign energies in kicking against the free quality secondary education that the NPP has proposed which seeks to help the poor to educate their children to the highest level with no cost. According to Nana Akufo-Addo, the NDC has again collapsed the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) which was brought into the system by the erstwhile NPP government to replace the killer �cash and carry system�. He said President Mahama and the NDC have never liked the Health Insurance Scheme because they fought against its passage in Parliament and its implementation, hence the tottering of the scheme under their watch. NDC Dangerous Campaign Game Nana Addo took a swipe at the president and his campaign team for treading on a very dangerous path due to the ethnic politics that the president has been preaching. According to him, President Mahama�s campaign is hinged on two things- disputing what he Nana Addo has proposed to do and preaching a North-South division. He said President Mahama has been telling the people in the North to vote for him because he comes from the North. He said the president�s comment is a very serious one and a threat to the unity of the nation since there is no difference between the north and the south because �we are all Ghanaians. �Where you hail from does not matter but what matters is what you can do for Ghana. It does not matter whether you are a Bono, Dagarti, Dagomba, Ashanti, or an Akyem, but what matters is your ability to deliver,� Nana Addo stated. NPP For Peaceful Elections Nana Akufo-Addo made a solemn pledge on behalf of all NPP supporters across the country that violence will not come from their camp and that they will remain peaceful before, during and after the elections. He therefore challenged President Mahama to also commit himself and his supporters to the peace that the NPP and the people of Ghana are looking for so that the impunity with which violence and atrocities are being visited on NPP sympathizers will end. �I have stated that no blood will be spilt for me to become president and I stand by this commitment. I want the president to also swear that he will not become a president with stained hands,� Nana Addo said, adding, �The president�s call for peace should not just be a mere rhetoric. He should walk the talk.� Nana Addo pointed out that a free, fair and peaceful election will see victory for the NPP. First Zongo Development Fund For the first time in the nation�s history, a Zongo Development Fund is going to be captured in Ghana�s 2013 Budget should Akufo-Addo become president. According to Nana Addo, his government will sit with the leadership of the Zongo communities to decide the kind of projects to be implemented in the Zongos to give a facelift to the Zongo communities in Ghana. He also promised to reinstitute the allowances for Arabic teachers which were removed by the Mahama-NDC government. Job Creation Nana Addo said the main pre-occupation of the in-coming NPP administration will be job creation to give work for the teeming unemployed youth scattered across the country for them to adequately contribute their quota to national development. According to him, before the NPP job creation agenda can be realized, there is a need to arrest the free-fall of the cedi which has been depreciating against the major international currencies since the NDC assumed power in the last four years. He said a robust cedi will boost business in Ghana and that the NPP has a very competent team to better manage the cedi from falling. This, he said, informed his decision to go for Dr Mahamudu Bawumia as his running mate to ensure that the cedi regains its value once again. Nana Addo said Dr Bawumia, a former deputy Governor of the Central Bank, was among the competent team who, under the Kufuor administration, helped to make the cedi a strong currency, which competed with the other international currencies head-on. He attributed the free-fall of the cedi to two persons, President John Mahama and his Vice, Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, who were in-charge of the economy as Head of the Economic Management Team and Governor of the Bank of Ghana respectively. Nana Akufo-Addo said the president and his vice have failed the entire nation and therefore need to step down and apologize to Ghanaians for destroying the value of the cedi which has affected all sectors of the economy, thereby bringing untold hardships on the citizenry. According to him, the president and his vice are still clinging on to power refusing to resign simply because of the massive looting of state resources and the largesse they are enjoying from it. Industrial economy The NPP 2012 presidential candidate reiterated his desire to move the current raw material export-based economy to a highly industrial economy, where the manufacturing sector will be revolutionalised to add value to the local raw materials to give more jobs to the youth. Free Education Nana Addo reiterated his plans to redefine basic education in Ghana to include secondary school where Senior High School (SHS) and Vocational and Technical institutions will be the exit point. He noted that under his presidency money will not be a hindrance to any child�s desire to pursue education to the secondary level. �We don�t want the situation where children cannot go to school simply because their parents cannot afford to pay fees. We don�t want that system again in Ghana. Every Ghanaian child should be able to have secondary education no matter the status of their parents,� he mentioned. He indicated that the free education programme which the NDC has cast doubts about will be implemented in the first year of his administration, whilst the interest of teachers will be adequately taken care of. He said Ghanaians cannot wait for 20years before they will be made to enjoy free education as being proposed by the NDC. �If they cannot do it they should give way for us to come and do it. They claim Ghana has no money to implement free secondary education but they get money to buy vehicles and laptops for chiefs and students as freebies just to buy their votes. I�m telling you Ghana has enough money to implement free education,� Nana Addo stated. Present were the NPP parliamentary candidates in the region who were introduced to the crowd by the flagbearer.