A member of the Government’s Communication Team has slammed the 2012 Vice Presidential candidate of the opposition New Patriotic Party, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, for spewing lies and desecrating the memory of the late former Vice President, Alhaji Aliu Mahama, during the maiden Memorial Lecture of the late Vice-President.
Dela Edem accuses Dr Bawumia of intellectual dishonesty and exhibited gross incompetence of current economic issues during his address.
According to him, Dr. Bawumia only mounted the platform to ‘disgrace’ the memorial service by engaging in “petty politics.”
Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, on Wednesday, dented the credentials of the ruling NDC as a social democratic party and was of an earnest view that with the incumbent government in power, Ghana risks making no significant strides as a nation.
Dr. Bawumia, delivering a speech at the Alhaji Aliu Mahama Memorial Lectures under the topic; “DISCIPLINE IN ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT: THE KEY TO SUSTAINABLE GROWTH AND PROSPERITY” described the NDC’s socialist agenda as an “Akonfem Socialism.”
According to him, the current government abandoned all fiscal discipline in an attempt to win the 2012 elections.
“Ghana’s total public debt has increased from GHC 9.5bn in 2008 to GHC43.9 billion as at August 2013 (an increase of 357% in less than 5 years)! Mr. Chairman, the NDC government has borrowed the equivalent of $20 billion in just the last five years!…
“What is worrying is that they tell us that this is only the first gear! Can you see or feel that $20 billion dollars has been pumped into this economy in the last five years? Where are the projects to show for the $20 billion? Just imagine the transformational effect if every region were given $2 billion for development projects…
“At the end of 2008, the government budget deficit to GDP ratio stood at 6.5% (after the rebasing of GDP). This outcome was described by the NDC as bad fiscal management. By the end of the election year 2012, the budget deficit had reached some 12% of GDP (after rebasing of GDP). This is double the deficit in 2008 which the NDC described as reckless! Interestingly, Mr. Chairman, today the NDC government’s objective in the medium term is to get to a budget deficit to GDP ratio of 6.5%, the same as was the case in 2008, which they called reckless! This is what is called reverse gear, not first gear,” the former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana said.
But his address appears not to have gone down well with the NDC Communicator who believed Dr Bawumia ‘massaged’ figures to suit his party.
He discounted claims that the economy’s 91day Treasury bill rate stood at 23% as stipulated by Dr. Bawumia in his address. According to him, it is “a palpable lie” coming from the renowned economist since the rate is rather 19%.
“He was intellectually dishonest on the occasion…Dr. Bawumia portrayed himself as an “economist who did not know his figures and was lying to the people,” he opined.
Contributing to discussions on PeaceFM’s “Kokrokoo” Morning Show, he stated; “Dr. Bawumia during the occasion came to do petty politics. He drag the programme through the mud…messed up the solemn nature of the occasion and used words that on an ordinary occasion, a gentleman like Bawumia should not have used…His credibility is gradually being eroded, honestly.
He was just joking. He didn’t know what he was talking about…What kind of joke was that? An occasion like that, a memorable occasion like that we were observing the memorial service of such a prominent personality; then you broach such issues on the platform?” he rhetorically asked.
To him, if Dr. Bawumia claims the NDC government’s Socialist Democratic System is an “Akonfem socialism”, then the Kufour regime was also a “Wa waaa Capitalism.”
Source: Peacefmonline
