A Columnist Michael Jarvis Bokor:
Dr. Michael Javis Borkor, New York
Folks, I have monitored happenings at yesterday’s encounter between Akufo-Addo and the group of 20 journalists lined up to interact with him as he sought to present his government’s performance in the past 12 months as a means to impress the Ghanaian that the sluice gates have been found and opened for economic progress toward improved living standards. Good for him but not for those feeling the heat of his government’s lethargy.
[ads1]And all that happened during the encounter boiled down to one incontrovertible conclusion that Akufo-Addo is still fixated on rally ground talk (courtesy Justice Atuguba) with the stated objective of damning the Mahama administration as if doing so will put food on the table of Ghanaians.
No wonder, then, that he went all along to say what has already begun being disputed by the very constituencies that he thought he could ride slip-shod over to prove that he is the miracle that Ghana has found to move it out of the woods.
He made a lot of fat noise, saying among others that his government had managed to retrieve 7 billion Dollars from contracts that the Mahama administration signed; or that single-sourcing has fetched Ghana billions of Dollars under his watch.
He also said that his government has within one year paid off all the areas owed contractors operating under the Getfund (which has been roundly debunked, though). Thumbing his chest, he announced that his government had paid off all the debts that Mahama accumulated.
Reaction to this press encounter has a lot for us. Indeed, it has become clear that such an encounter was nothing but an opportunity for the rally ground talk and electioneering campaign humdrum that irks the ordinary suffering Ghanaian who voted for Akufo-Addo but cannot make sense out of all that gibberish from him on his government’s accomplishments.
As an avowed critic of Akufo-Addo and the NPP, I agree with such sentiments.
In the end, what has changed? Nothing. Where is all the money that Akufo-Addo claimed his government has retrieved from contracts bloated by the Mahama administration? If the government had so much, why is it going round begging for loans all over the place to inflate the debt burden?
Folks, simply put, all that happened at the press conference or whatever it may be called is just part of the grand agenda for sustaining the rogue politics that the NPP has thrived on all these years. It doesn’t put food on the poor Ghanaian’s table.
It’s a futile attempt to muddy the waters. And as the NDC camp has strongly reacted, if Akufo-Addo thinks that much wrong-doing went on in the award of contracts under Mahama, why won’t he just keep quiet for the structures that he is putting in place to do the work of nailing those people? He is talking, talking, and talking as if that is the solution.
My candid conclusion regarding the press encounter is that it was just an opportunity created to self-gratify. Nothing worth anybody’s bother. Ghanaians aren’t strangers to such characters puffing themselves up because they think they now hold the purse strings