Financial Analyst, Sydney Casely-Hayford, has said the Vice President, Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, failed the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and its Presidential Candidate, John Mahama in the just ended election.
“To a large extent, I think Kwesi Amissah-Arthur is to blame for the NDC losing this election,” Mr. Casely-Hayford opined on The Big Issue.
The December 7 presidential poll saw the worst defeat recorded by a sitting President in Ghana’s election history.
President Mahama became the first incumbent to lose a re-election bid after a first term, as the opposition New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) Flagbearer, Nana Akufo-Addo, won 53.85% of the total valid votes cast, against his 44.40%.
Mr. Casely-Hayford indicated that the Veep was brought into the party in 2012 “as someone who was going to be able to sort out the financial and economic problems” and also as a counter to the NPP’s Running Mate and economist, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
The past election cycle saw Dr. Bawumia present a bleak assessment of Ghana’s economy, during a lecture, where he dared the NDC’s Mr. Amissah-Arthur to answer his 170 questions on the state of the economy.
But Mr. Amissah-Arthur largely avoided the topic and said two days to the elections that, anyone asking 170 questions was not serious and that most of the questions put forward by Dr. Bawumia were mere statements of fact.
Mr. Casely-Hayford maintained that the Vice President was expected to bring some sanity into the NDC’s economic policies and developments especially after the death of a senior adviser to the President and former Chair of the National Development Planning Commission, Paul Victor Obeng.
But Mr. Amissah Arthur was never able to step forward to assume that mantle after PV Obeng’s death in 2014, given the crucial role he played with the National Economic Forum at Senchi, he stated.
“Therefore [Finance Minsiter] Terkper became the person who was driving economic change and economic stability to the extent that Kwesi Amissah Arthur never featured strongly, even though he was one of the persons who had far more experience than anybody else in the party at the time,” Mr. Casely-Hayford noted.
“This ultimately let down the thrust of any financial change in the party and in government,” according to Mr. Hayford, who added that “the weakest part of the NDC was the economics issue, and they were never able to get somebody who could bring the confidence that it would change in the future.”
Source: Citifmonline.com
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From my childhood to my near fourthy, I have not seen NDC garnering wicked intelligent guys to manage the nation any time it assumes the office. Ghanaians are wise now! Thank God for Ghana.
He was there drinking Tea and assorted meats,Hahahaha edy bee k3k3.
Ooooh Mr Casely-Hayford, NDC had a financial economic propaganda guru (Fiifi Kwetey). Hahahahahahaha....naaniama. Next time!!!
The real cause of the N D C defeat is simple,the NDC had plan with the electoral commission to hack their computers and change the results in their favour through the transmission process,when the resuls started coming in ,the original results did change,the N PP got wind of the NDC/EC plan in advance ,the N P P also brought I T expects in to Ghana and they were able to see through technology all that was happening on the electronic transmission of the results,so these NPP IT expects crushed the EC computers forcing the E C to do manual collation.The EC did confirm some people had tempered with their systems.At this point the NDC had no plan B.If these are not the facts then where did OFOSU AMPOFO get the results which suggest the NDC was in a comfortable lead,if the they believe the results they are holding are the original, why are they not talking of going to court,Kofi Adams also claimed the NDC I T system had failed them thus their defeat,this goes to confirm that the had a rigging plan,note the NDC I T systems failed at the same time the E C also said some people had tempered with their computers,can this be a mere coincidence?.
He mislead Rawling administration and collapse it