I am told that the crowd, which witnessed the campaign launch of President John Dramani Mahama’s re-election bid, grossed 67,000.
According to one pro-National Democratic Congress newspaper, it is the biggest crowd to watch a party political activity in the country.
The problem with this figure is that the capacity of the new Cape Coast Stadium is 15,000. How 67,000 Ghanaians crammed themselves into a sporting arena that can take only 15,000 people, sums up the propaganda stunt in the figures being bundied about.
Apparently, the NDC, as political concept, is still in the propaganda business. Two days ago, I engaged a Cabinet Minister in an animated discussion on politics in Ghana. According to my friend, the Honourable Minister of State, politics is all about propaganda.
When I told him that politics is about the welfare of the people, and that the whole gamut of elections is for the people to choose among the many contesting political parties and their personalities, the group and the concept that could help improve the quality of life in this part of the world.
After a lengthy debate, he bought into the idea with the caveat that before those group of people and their policies would be accepted, the people must be told what would make them vote for a particular political party and its leadership.
It is a shame! But, in this country, it is becoming clearer by the day that election has very little basis in substance. That is why the height of a presidential candidate has suddenly entered the fray for national discussion. It also tells much about why twisting of the lips was an important addition to the campaign for the highest office of the land, last time round.
The last I heard, Muslim and Zongo voters are being urged to reject the main opposition party. The reason for the rejection, the good people of Ghana are being reminded, is that sometime in history, the promulgation of the Aliens Compliance Order affected mainly Zongo residents.
I will like to submit that the whole gamut of the Aliens Compliance Order of 1969 could be a subject of a healthy debate. But that is not the thrust of this article, which aims at dissecting the economic record of the government in power.
Yesterday, I read another version of President John Dramani Mahama’s rendition of his campaign launch at the newly-opened Cape Coast Sports Stadium on Sunday, and was thrilled at the very idea of how this nation would return to single digit inflation next year.
According to state-run Daily Graphic, President Mahama has given the assurance that Ghana would return to single digit inflation next year. That is, after the economic bail-out with the International Monetary Fund had run its full course, we are told.
The problem with this kind of assurance is its antecedent. In the beginning, going to the IMF was only to buttress the home grown policy of this administration we were told, and often reminded. When the chips were down, going to the IMF was advertised as key to the survival of the economy, which had veered completely out of control, as a result of reckless spending and borrowing.
How exiting from the IMF deal next year is going to respond to single digit inflation, tells much about the propaganda that has fuelled the economic mess we are in, as a people.
The presidential declaration sounds as if the very high inflation under-pinning national economic policies could simply be wished away by a presidential fiat. The truth is that we have messed up our economy. That is why prices of goods and services are shooting up.
The resources of state, simply, are unable to shore up the economy. I am not an economist, but when production is unable to meet demand, you have demand outstripping supply, which, in turn, shoots up prices and triggers higher inflation.
I would have wished that Mr. Seth Terkper, the Honourable Finance Minister, who is supposed to have his pulse on the state economy, would do the talking about keeping inflation down, and not the President who is seeking re-election, and who is likely to trigger more expenditure, against the background of lack of supplies.
One of the reasons why I am not impressed by this particular presidential declaration is the experience of the immediate past. In 2012, with President Mahama desperate to be elected the fourth constitutional Head of State of the Fourth Republic, so much reckless expenditure was recorded, that at the end of the vote, this nation had recorded a whopping GH¢8.7 billion expenditure, over and above the budgeted figure.
The huge hole created in the national budget from the election ‘give-aways’ is one reason why the state economy is depressed, and forced the country to seek a bail-out from the IMF, which responded with its usual stiff conditions.
The recommendations for an end to subsidies which have triggered a huge rise in prices of petroleum prices, and resulted in killer electricity tariffs, owe their genesis to the reckless spending of 2012 to get Mr. John Dramani Mahama elected.
When the State of Ghana suddenly discovered that our traditional rulers needed four wheel drives, at a time when the expenditure had not been captured in the national budget, that was a recipe for disaster.
Remember the sudden explosion of ‘Friends of Mahama’ and other spurious organisations on all campuses of various institutions for higher learning? What about the sight of girls, some so horribly young, driving brand new Hundai i10s around with the picture of then candidate Mahama embossed on them? All those expenditures, reckless as they were, reflected on the GH¢8.7 billion over-expenditure blown in three months.
In spite of all assurances that the reckless expenditure of 2012 would not recur this year, another bout of reckless spending is taking place on the blind side of most Ghanaians.
At places like Chorkor, the coastal enclave in Accra, where Dr. Alfred Okoe Vanderpuiye, Mayor of Accra, has set base in his quest to enter Parliament while still at post, asphalted roads are replacing the worn-out road network. At Adabraka, Asylum Down and Osu, which form the base of the Osu Korley Constituency, asphalted roads are popping up. The sight is friendly to the eye, I must confess.
What is not so friendly to the economy of the State of Ghana is the source of funding for these roads. On the billboards erected to advertise the construction of these roads, is the shocking reality that money is being sourced from the Cocoa Roads Project of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD).
What these announcements are saying is that funding for roads to the hinterlands, which would normally have opened up our rural dwellings for the evacuation of cocoa, is being diverted to service city roads. It is all in the business of gaining electoral advantage for this administration.
It is not only Accra roads that are benefitting from projects originally conceived to open up the hinterlands. In front of my humble residence at Ekumfi Ekrawfo in the Central Region, the rugged network that links Ekrawfo to Gyinankoma, and then to Ekotsi to join the main Accra-Cape Coast Road, is being upgraded. According to information on the billboard erected at the intersection with the main street at Ekrawfo, the stretch of road is to be tarred, which is excellent news.
The tragedy is that funding is being sourced from the Cocoa Roads Project, meaning that funding for feeder roads to cocoa growing areas like Kasapii, Wawase and Sankore in the various hinterlands in Ghana, for instance, from where cocoa is normally exported to earn foreign exchange for the country, is losing its funding for improvement in their link road networks, because the authorities have decided to divert funding for those projects to gain political advantage.
The tragedy is that no one appears to be worried about the sight of very terrible roads to many cocoa growing areas captured day in and day out on various television networks in the country.
Instead of attending to the needs of these rural communities to serve as an incentive to cocoa farming and help improve the trade balance of this nation, the authorities are comfortable buying votes, by diverting funding for the road construction to places where the cocoa tree is completely alien to the vegetation.
If the economy of Ghana is failing to respond to treatment, there is one of your key answers. It is one of the major reasons why I would not be rooting for President John Dramani Mahama and his ruling National Democratic Congress. Gerrymandering is inimical to the success of this nation as a political entity.
<<Print>>