Acting National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Freddie Blay has said that President John Dramani Mahama would not have got the opportunity to "mismanage Ghana" if he had been a member of the party.
“I am President today because I am in NDC. This wouldn't have been possible in another party,” the President was quoted as saying in Tamale last week.
This comment has attracted widespread condemnation with some members of the opposition accusing him of engaging in ‘shameless tribal politics’ aimed at pitching Northerners against the NPP.
And this widespread condemnation, Freddie Blay said, was exact arguing that President Mahama would not have had the opportunity to be President in the NPP not because of his tribe but due to his gross incompetence.
Below is the full statement read at the press conference:
NPP RESPONSE TO INCOMPETENT MAHAMA
Ladies and Gentlemen of the media, we invited you here today, hopefully to give through you, a competent response to some un-presidential statements made by the President of the Republic, John Dramani Mahama, in the last few days during his campaign tour of the regional capitals.
He has called his campaign tour, “CHANGING LIVES”. 3y3 as3m oh! Let me begin first of all by telling the President that our party, the New Patriotic Party, is most grateful to him for beginning his 2016 campaign with the very theme that is on top of the minds of Ghanaians: CHANGE.
We agree with the President that the 2016 campaign is all about Change. It is about a change from the NDC to the Party that knows about the business of governance. It is 2000 all over again. Except the difference is that President John Mahama had more than enough reosurces than President Rawlings and has squandered every bit of that opportunity. Also, going into 2016, unlike 2000, the NPP now has a solid record of being in office for eight years and delivering competently on that mandate.
2016 is about a change from the INCOMPETENCE the people see, the incompetence we feel and the incompetence we know. It is about a change from corruption. It is about a change from the return of Cash & Carry. It is about a change from the hopelessness of the youth. It is about a change to bring back hope. It is about a change from dumsor. It is about a change from broken promises.
Next year’s election is all about a change from falling education standards. It is about a change from the collapse of the school-feeding programme. It is about a change from increasing the burden of the cost of education on parents and students
2016 is about a change in the rising cost of living. It is about changing the rising cost of borrowing. It is about business people wanting a change in the high cost of running their business. . It is about changing the fate of the falling Ghana Cedi. It is about ensuring that Ghanaian workers can have some change in their pockets.
From all indications from the vast majority of the people on the ground, 2016 is really about a change from the NDC to the NPP. A change from a party that in eight years make the people poorer and the nation bankrupt to the Party that can rescue the economy and put Ghana back to work. It is about a change from the needless and avoidable hardships that Ghanaians have been forced to face in these eight years of NDC. The campaign in 2016 is essentially about which party can be TRUSTED to change the lives of Ghanaians. And these decisions will be based on the facts. Nothing more, nothing less.
In fact, what Ghanaians understand the President to be saying with his slogan is simply this hash tag: #ChangeNDCIn2016ToChangeYourLives
2016 is a campaign for change. And when a government that is ending its second term is promising to transform Ghana when it cannot even afford to get the transformers working to keep our lights on, the good people of Ghana know what to say to that government. The message from Ghanaians to President John Mahama is, “enough is enough!”
On his tour in Tamale at the weekend, the President could not understand why Ghanaians were not seeing the work he claims to be doing. His explanation was that, “We are working just like an artist. When artists are working you don’t actually know what they are doing until they finish the work.” Hmmm…
The NPP is struggling to get the logic here… If after more than 80 per cent of the drawing or painting has been done, and the person who is sitting there for her portrait to be done cannot recognise herself on the canvass then what difference will the remaining 20% make? What image can come out of the creative hands of such a hopeless so-called artist?
After seven years of a Better Ghana, the President is now telling us that we should not worry if we cannot see the work the NDC claims to have done. That all the promises that he has failed to fulfil will suddenly be fulfilled in the last year and under an IMF austerity programme.
But, he has let the cat out of the propaganda bag. By describing himself as the artist whose finishing touches we still cannot see, the President is himself admitting that he has failed. He is saying he is guilty of failing Ghana.
THE POLITICS OF DIVISION
In the North, the President decided to go back to playing divisive politics. It appears John Mahama knows no better. He is so desperate to hang on to power that he does not mind if he bangs the heads of Ghanaians together, tribe against tribe, and religion against religion. To him politics must be about ‘us against them’. The politics of division is what he chooses.
He said, “Let me assure Ghanaians that NDC is a party for ordinary people, unlike other parties where they look at your pedigree.”
This is very rich coming from the son of a cabinet minister whose opening words in his own book, ‘My First Coup d’état”, was to announce to the world that he attended “Achimota, an elite boarding school in Accra,” and that his father was a royal, who had six cars and the best house in town. There is nothing wrong about your privileged background, Mr President. But, don’t pretend to the people to be what you are not.
We want to assure President Mahama and his NDC that Ghanaians have seen through their tricks. The NDC pretends to be with the poor but end up making the poor poorer. The NDC says they are with the masses but end up introducing policies that hurt the masses, massively.
We in the NPP want to give notice to President Mahama that he should bring it on! The NPP is ready! We are ready to meet every LIE he wants to tell the people of Ghana with the TRUTH about his abysmal performance.
EIGHT-YEAR RECORD
We will dissect the entire eight year record of the NDC, put it beside the eight year record of the NPP, put our Presidential Candidate and his Running Mate against the President and his Vice President, and then let the people of Ghana be the judge as to who is competent and can be trusted to lead Ghana.
John Mahama’s record from 2009, first as Vice President and Head of the Economic Management Team under President Mills, and, next, as President of the Republic, will not be closed to public scrutiny, whether he likes it or not. We will talk about his incompetence. It has been two terms of misery; two terms of lies; two terms of wasted opportunities. Two terms of pure incompetence and we will talk about it.
The President has given notice that we should not expect anything new in his third campaign at the Presidency. The same campaign he conducted in 2008 and 2012, is what he is using for 2016.
Take just this weekend, for example. President John Mahama said during his campaign trip to the Northern Region, “I am President today because I am in NDC. This wouldn't have been possible in another party.”
It is obvious that the understanding the President wanted his Tamale audience to get from his statement was tribal. Shameless tribal politics for him is acceptable. It appears when it comes to campaigning for votes John Mahama knows no better. He believes in crude, crass and cheap tribal politics even at the cost of threatening the unity and stability of our nation.
We wish to remind the President that he first became President by a very unfortunate accident. He became President because of the sad and arguably mysterious death of his boss, President John Atta Mills. May God bless his soul.
But, President Mahama is right on one thing though. He would not have been President if he were in the NPP. For the simple reason that NPP will not risk putting the destiny of Ghana in the hands of an incompetent person who has shown to be soft on corruption, who is friendly to corruption and was even under investigation by his boss for corruption, according to the then Attorney-General, Martin Amidu.
Let this important point be made loud and clear: the NPP will not impoverish the people of this country by choosing and imposing on Ghana, through deceit, a leader whose political philosophy can be defined as: an incompetent government by corrupt people, with corrupt people, and for corrupt people.
It is what a Supreme Court judge described as the political philosophy of “create, loot and share.”
THE SAD CASE OF SADA
Permit me to use just one of the many examples to illustrate this true philosophy of President John Mahama. You can call it Mahama-ism. In 2012, President Mahama went to the North to tell the people to vote for him because he was from the North. He was one of them. Unknown to them, however, his government was at the same time using the excuse of developing the North to steal money from the State.
Before that, Candidate John Mahama in 2008 deceived the people of the North with the promise of the Savanah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), which was introduced merely as a desperate counter to Akufo-Addo’s well-thought-through programme for the rapid transformation of the three regions of the North.
Eventually, SADA became mainly a conduit for stealing tens of millions of Ghana Cedis. And, up to date our President, who is friendly to corruption, has not been able to see to the prosecution of a single person over the blatant theft that took place at SADA. It is sad and unforgivable. On 26th May 2014, 18 months ago, President Mahama gave a clear and loud public promise to Ghanaians that he would implement the recommendations in the audit report on SADA and see to it that those top officials investigated and found to be corrupt were dealt with in accordance with the criminal law. But, like many utterances by our President, who, perhaps instructively, cut his political teeth in public relations, that promise has turned out to be a purely cheap and empty talk, designed to serve a short-term propaganda purpose.
So Mr President, where is the SADA cash that was stolen? Ghanaians want their money back. Ghanaians want to see those who stole from them punished. It is not as if the SADA guinea fowls flew into Burkina Faso carrying the stolen cash in their peaks. An official audit report has shown you where the money went and where the money was meant to go but did not go. You know who and who were responsible. Why can’t you act for once against corruption? What is it about corruption that you seem to be so in love with, Mr President? What is it about corruption that you seem to be so afraid to act against it? What is it? The people deserve to know. That is why we are saying, your political philosophy and practice appears to be all about an incompetent government by corrupt people, with corrupt people, and for corrupt people.
The New Patriotic Party, nevertheless, is calling on the President to see to the immediate implementation of the recommendations of the audit report on corruption at SADA. We want action. We want the scale of justice to weigh against those who steal from the people, keeping our country impoverished. It is so unfair to exploit the poverty of the people of the North to take government money and use it on yourself, your cronies and your campaign. The people of the North should not be taken for granted. They deserve respect. They deserve prosperity and not empty promises. They deserve their fair share of the national cake. Don’t take in their name and eat it on their behalf. It is wicked, it is selfish and it is evil!
SAVE OUR COUNTRY
We, call on you, journalists, to not let your guard down. Do not be distracted from your core duty of being the Fourth Estate of the Realm. Do what you do best. Help the country, ask the questions, and pile up the pressure on the people who are the custodians of the purse. Do so diligently without fear or favour, to save our treasury, to save our democracy and to save our country.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the media, at the same Tamale rally on Saturday, where he played the tribal card, the President went ahead to judge his own performance with flying colours. He even went ahead to mock God to say that the Good Lord knows he has done well and will reward him with a “one touch” victory in 2016. Our only response to the President’s constant exploitation of religion for deceit is to refer him to Galatians 6:7, “Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”
We want to remind Ghanaians that in eight years the NPP government, under President John Kufuor, spent the total of 20 billion Ghana Cedis to achieve all the good things that Ghanaians remember so well and miss so dearly. But, in less than seven years, this NDC government has spent 200 billion Ghana Cedis. Yes, ten times more than the NPP did. And, yet, we are told that the artist is still competently at work and that we must continue to sit down on the chair and shut up until his work is done.
Two days after declaring himself the one touch victor in 2016, at another NDC rally here in Accra, at the Trade Fair Centre, the President decided to trade in cheap, street propaganda. He decided to go into the gutter to throw mud.
Now to our last point: incompetence. President John Mahama has invited Ghanaians to interrogate his competence in office. I am sorry, in fact, he has issued an executive order that only two people in Ghana have the right to question his performance. And, he has named those two eminent people, the two living former Presidents of our Republic. The rest of us have no competence to question his competence or incompetence.
We do not think it is fair on the President for us to compare Alhaji Dr Mahamudu Bawumia to him. One, Dr Bawumia is not incompetent. Two, Dr Bawumia is not corrupt. Three, Dr Bawumia knows about economic management. Four, Dr Bawumia is competent.
If competence is defined by a President who promised to end dumsor in 2013, and has been competently shifting that expiry date since then, and with no end in sight, then we rest our case.
As to the details of why this government under President Mahama has been most incompetent, we respectfully wish to leave that job to Dr Bawumia when he addresses the nation.
We wish to end by associating ourselves with the statement from the PPP that, “In fact, by ignoring your responsibility of governing this country and engaging in this fruitless tour is enough justification for the hash tag #incompetentmahama# to be adapted from now until November 2016.””
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