The former president John Dramani Mahama has been urged by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to stop lying to Ghanaians about his record while in office because “the facts show otherwise.”
The General Secretary of the NPP, John Boadu, responded to Mahama’s recent claim that President Nana Akufo-Addo is hiding behind Covid-19 to overspend by saying that the 2020 candidate for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is out of touch with post-Covid-19 governance.
“Much as John Mahama seeks re-election on a campaign platform of ‘going back’ to the IMF, he attempts to confuse history by painting a rosy picture of his disastrous management of the Ghanaian economy between 2012 and 2016. Indeed, he put the economy in free fall after extremely reckless expenditure in excess of some GHS12 billion in pursuit of election victory in 2012.
“His economy, under Seth Terkper, never recovered, leading to unheard of taxation measures on condoms and cutlasses,” Boadu said.
He further stated that, “This period of economic mismanagement was characterised by rising inflation and declining growth, with growth sharply declining from 14% in 2011 to 3.9% in 2016. John Mahama claimed that this rapid decline occurred during typical “bust and boom” periods. Falling commodity prices, which, in accordance with former President Mahama’s boom and bust analysis, are typical for every administration, were the worst economic crisis he ever experienced. However, he was unable to maintain the economy’s stability.
“He just does not get it,” Boadu said on Covid-19. President Akufo-Addo succinctly stated for the world to take note of and follow that the foundation of all economic modelling worldwide is Covid-19 and the ability to preserve lives and then livelihoods.
“Moreover, the Akufo-Addo administration has faced the worst ever international crisis in Covid-19, a scourge that has depreciated the worldwide economy and driven debt up generally. John Mahama’s lack of understanding of the Covid-19 economy is positively dangerous for Ghana because it badly skews his feeble attempts at analysis of our current economic situation. The IMF, to which he trumpets we should go to, has certified our economy as one of the fastest growing in terms of Covid-19 economic rebound.
“Mahama put together a Covid-19 advisory team. Covid-19 is not over yet. Where is the advisory team announced to applause and pageantry? Nowhere to be found. For the information of former President Mahama, Covid-19 is not only a matter of health. It has fundamentally become an economic imperative.”
Boadu added that Mahama would have made a mistake if he had been in office when Covid occurred.
What would Mahama have done differently in that situation? What are his options, and where are they? Alternative financial and management strategies for Covid-19? He lacks a strategy because he is unaware of and unwilling to acknowledge that Covid-19 has a significant impact on the economy. What strategy did the former president Mahama employ to obtain vaccines? What is his replacement for maintaining school opening hours, which he and his party fiercely criticised just over a year ago? What are the Mahama alternatives to the policies in the cocoa industry that have led to a record-breaking output of cocoa beans?
“Indeed, what is John Mahama’s alternative to anything, apart from the IMF? If you are the alternative, then spell out your alternatives to the Ghanaian people now. He is asking for a dialogue on the economy. There are many fora available for such a dialogue but he needs to put forward his plan.
Anybody can and has the right to criticise. But we expect a man who has been Vice President, head of the NDC’s economic management team and subsequently President and insistently bidding to become President again, to offer tangible alternatives, capable of feasibility testing, instead of just criticising. What is your plan? What is your vision for growing Ghana?”
Furthermore, he said Mahama “actively oversaw the worst crisis ever to hit our financial sector, negligence that has cost over GHS21 billions of public resources to correct. Meanwhile, he turned judgement debt payments into a cottage industry.”
