The debate and arguments over the achievements between Ghana’s two main political parties, thus opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), seems not to come to an end because the NDC has sought to rubbish achievements of the ruling government.
The NDC has said the NPP’s initial 78% figure indicating it as the performance rate of the government is nothing but a blatant scam which is being sold to the ordinary Ghanaian.
Speaking at a town hall meeting in Kumasi, Vice President Bawumia said the Akufo-Addo administration has accomplished and fulfilled 78% of its 2016 manifesto promises, up from the 72% earlier stated.
Vice President Bawumia is quoted to have said, “In all, we made 388 promises in our manifesto. The most recent validation exercise at the end of January 2019 shows that we had delivered or are delivering on 303, 78 percent of the promises, up from the 72 percent reported earlier.”
However, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa , the MP for North Tongu , addressing the media at the weekly press briefing of the NDC on the theme; NPP 2016 manifesto in perspective: claims, deception and really, stressed that per the party’s research, the ruling government barely scored 20%.
The ruling government, per the NDC’s research, made 631 manifesto promises not 388 as earlier touted by Vice President Bawumia.
According to Okudzeto Ablakwa, the cumulative performance of the ruling govt in achieving its promises rather hovers around 14% not 78%.
Being specific with regards to the performance in specific ministries, the NDC ranked the chieftaincy and local government ministries zero.
The NDC party claimed that this means only 86 of the 631 promises have been delivered. “Notwithstanding the difficult economy we inherited, we had to get on with it and start to fix the problems. We were cognisant of our many promises. In fact, at the direction of President Akufo-Addo, we put together a dashboard of manifesto promises immediately after we were declared winners of the 2016 election, and before we were sworn into office. We have been using this dashboard to track our manifesto promises since”, the Vice-President said at the time. “The challenge was huge. How could an economy that could not pay even teacher and nursing training allowances, suddenly deliver lower taxes, restore teacher and nursing training allowances, create jobs, implement free senior high school education, NABCo, Planting for Food and Jobs, One Village-One Dam, One Constituency-One Ambulance, reduce electricity prices, formalise the economy, industrialising the economy, reducing the cost of doing business, etc., while at the same time reducing the budget deficit and the rate of borrowing? It seemed an impossible task and our opponents were emphatic that we could not fulfill our promises. But we were very confident that with good economic management and by the grace of God, we could make what seemed impossible possible.
“The data and the evidence are clear that we have largely met our manifesto promises. We have delivered and are delivering on over 300 of our promises, and we are on course to do even more,” he declared.
