Former President John Dramani Mahama says President Akufo-Addo’s 2019 State of Nation Address (SONA) speech was silent on teething economic issues in the country.
He said ordinary Ghanaians, who are feeling the brunt of the poor management of the economy, have expressed shock in various media engagements, at the beautiful picture the President painted about the economy.
On Thursday, February 21, 2019, President Akufo-Addo, as part of his constitutional mandate, was on the floor of Parliament to brief Ghanaians on the state of the nation from 2018 to date.
Among other expectations, the business community in Ghana thought the President would talk about the high forex, especially the exchange rate of the major foreign currency, the US dollar, to cedi.
However, the President failed to comment on that. Currently, GHȻ5.25 exchanges for US$1 and this, importers and exporters said, was eroding their gains.
Speaking on an Accra-based radio station Friday, a day after the 2019 SONA, John Mahama said his successor’s speech did not lift the spirit of Ghanaians.
“His failure to touch on the foreign exchange was a grievous omission,” the former President criticised.
He recalled how Vice President Bawumia, then the running mate of candidate Akufo-Addo, held series of public lectures to explain to Ghanaians how his (Mahama) government had so mismanaged the economy that the cedi performed abysmally against the US dollar.
“Today, you have the power and opportunity to pool your economic wizardry to stabilise the dollar to the cedi, but what do we see? The business community is unhappy because it is paying more for a dollar.
“I think the fundamentals are stronger now and so the exchange rate has not exposed their propaganda,” John Mahama said ironically.
He said the government of Nana Addo’s New Patriotic Party (NPP) has borrowed more than any government, after two years in office, yet it has nothing concrete to show for.
In his view, the 2019 SONA was futuristic instead of emphatically accounting for what the government had been able to do, and that, to him, was inspiring and so failed to lift the spirit of Ghanaians.
By: Umar Sheriff/awakenewsonline.com
