The joy relating to Ghana’s successful completion of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) loan is simply a façade. There’s nothing joyous about the occasion. Indeed, it may rub-off Ghanaians positively in the mid-future but certainly not immediately. Even the prospect of a long-haul benefit is highly contentious. It’s contingent upon how we behave or misbehave in seeing through judiciously, the conditions attached to the loan facility.
Of course, we have a history of evading what’s right and practicing what’s wrong and that have in many instances, eroded any form of gains we expected from similar success story we had anticipated from an IMF loan or any other similar facilities from the international capital market. In the meantime, we are all braced for the draconian conditions that come with the IMF loan: higher tariffs on electricity, water and all other utilities.
Fuel prices have been inconsistent and there are no signs that with the IMF bailout, it will be anything favourable. Already, there is huge furore about transport fares with the two unions in charge of lorry fares tussling over whether to reduce the current fares on public transports or not. There is a freeze on public sector employments. Many of the government’s intervention programmes are at risk.
The government’s Free Senior High School flagship programme is earmarked for serious alteration in the coming months, if not weeks. This is the harsh reality that confronts the government in both short, medium and possibly, in the long run. That’s the price one pays for being visionless to prescribe local stimulus to solve local problems.
Already, the government is suffering from serious economic crunch and with IMF harsh realities, every government under such conditions will have to be extra tactful in its decision-making process. Especially that which borders on a government with the desire to hand over power to itself like what the NPP intends doing in 2024. It’s all about Breaking the 8.
The current NPP is not bothered the least about the spiral of its under-achievements, but how to lubricate its political machinery to ensure victory in 2024. That has been the difference between the current NPP administration and that which we had in the 2000’s under John Agyekum Kufuor. The Kufuor NPP lived the true political orientation of their tradition; very orderly and conservative.
That’s why today, many NPP folks have the guts to taunt their rival NDC that it’s a party bereft of ideas and proper policy direction. With the change in its values, the NPP is also copying the NDC style of governance which is centered more on the HOW to win power than how to USE power. The current crop of NPPists enjoy the trappings of the office very much than sacrificing for the system.
That’s the crossroad that the new NPP finds itself. Otherwise, why within all the heat, the establishment is fighting to make the candidacy of the Vice President, a sanctified project for the 2024 elections. And from all indications, the scheme to get party delegates to embrace the Bawumia presidency is all very much on course. Even party chiefs who are known Alan adherents have all of a sudden, switched over to Bawumia.
The vice President’s campaign team keep swirling. Or so it seems. Ministers of State, DCEs, party chiefs are joining the Bawumia bandwagon. At least that alone changes the complexion of the game. Psychologically, it does boost Bawumia’s chances of at least picking the NPP slot at the delegates' level. Yes, the Akufo Addos may maneuver their way through to get their baby pet project going in the NPP primary.
But have they looked at the bigger picture? How wise is the decision to bring Bawumia to slug it out with John Mahama of the NDC? Every negative legacy of the administration hits Bawumia even more than the President. The President is on his way out. Alan and the rest may all have been members of the Akufo Addo administration, but their sins come nowhere close to the man Bawumia, who has on countless occasions deputized as the President of the Republic in the absence of the sitting President.
First, Bawumia was touted as the economic genius that the NPP needed desperately when the search party settled on him in 2008 as Akufo Addo’s running mate. Indeed, the NPP breached its membership code in order to bring Bawumia on board. What has been Bawumia’s sixth year terminal report— worst in the annals of the country’s political history, even some NPP members agree to the assertion.
He tries to take cover in digitization, and that is proving to be unprecedented disaster. Technology? When did the Vice President become that savvy in IT or the development of soft or hard wares? Is it that someone recommends the type, or the kind of technology needed, and he directs where it should be sent to? Often, any such destinations are prescribed on an experts’ advice and not presidential directions.
Is Bawumia telling us that he has presence in every public facility in Ghana to have given instructions on what each should be doing with it digital needs? So what’s this farce about he being the digital maestro? Any member at the helm of ministries, departments and agencies can easily call for a restoration of technology where it’s mostly needed.
Pre-election 2016 and 2020 and the Vice President was at his worst wits, labelling then President John Mahama incompetent. Fast forward, some two years after the 2020 elections and Bawumia is harshly being affected by his own bug. To refer to the Vice President as incompetent is an understatement.
He is the second in command of the cabal that has ruined Ghana to the ground to the extent that some Ghanaians, including NPP members do not want to have anything to do with his name; except for his paid up surrogates whose pretentious praises of the Vice President, have rather worsened his already battered popularity rating.
Now the Northern factor. Isn’t naïve and politically suicidal for anyone to enter into a presidential contest with a Northerner, when a contesting party has already settled on a Northerner? Already the signs are that Bawumia is struggling for recognition in his northern territories.
And yet the government is canvassing for someone who seems not to have locus in his own home region. No wonder, the NDC is so excited about the Bawumia challenge in 2024. With the narration, I dare ask are people who are clamouring for Bawumia to be the NPP presidential candidate thinking beyond the party’s primary?
Content created and supplied by: RKeelson (via Opera News )
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