We Need To Be Serious; Launch of Long-Term Devt. Plan Was Not The Time For Singing And Dancing - Kwabena Agyepong

General Secretary of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Kwabena Agyepong, says the long term development plan which was launched by President John Mahama on Tuesday, August 4, 2015 was full of funfair.

President Mahama, in his keynote address during the launch of Ghana’s 40-year plan, expressed delight at the general acceptance that the country needed a long-term plan that would provide the antidote to its development challenges.

He said it showed what the nation could achieve, if the people worked together devoid of partisanship and other differences, he also called on Ghanaians to do away with the pull-him-down syndrome and cynicism, which are counter-productive.

President Mahama said the country was starting on a good note in bringing together people from all shades of the society under one umbrella to chart a common purpose.

In agreement with President Mahama, the Chief Scribe of the NPP on Okay Fm’s "Ade Akye Abia" Morning Show said long term plan is very essential for every country but to him, the seriousness attached to the launch was taken away by too much music and dance performances and speeches from a lot of people.

According to him, the whole event was wasted on the launch of the 40 year development plan, dwindling productivity in the end as the launch could not have lasted for more than one hour to make people go back to their duty post to work.

That was not the time to sit for entertainment with singing, drumming and dancing; it was time for serious consultative process for people to deliberate on the plans for the country and so it should have been treated with all seriousness it deserved,” he chided.

This entertainment in such serious occasion was not proper and I think we have to do away with such attitude towards serious work. Too many statements were made and those ones could have been captured in the booklet; the President should have been made to go straight to the business of the day without this funfair. Our attitude towards time should change,” he bemoaned.

...I hope this will not be a talk shop because there was too much funfair…there are things we go straight to the point; do it and get out of the way and implement”.

He however hand-picked from the President’s speech that he [Mahama] excluded former President Kufuor’s 50 year economic vision which was projected to begin a national dialogue for long term planning for the country.

He mentioned that the target was that by 2057, Ghana hopefully will improve per capital income to $50,000 US Dollars (but now around $1,000 US dollars) but surprisingly he did not hear in the president's delivery on Tuesday any reference to those documents as they were public knowledge in 2007 when even the current President was an MP.