In 2003, when the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government of President J.A. Kufuor wanted to implement the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), the National Democratic Congress (NDC) totally rejected it and all its MPs walked out of Parliament.
The NHIS was to make healthcare very affordable to the poor and needy in society. Earlier the NDC had implemented the Cash-and-Carry system, where one had to pay at full cost rate, for health all services.
For the NDC to not only reject this scheme but also attempt to demonise it, clearly shows that the largest opposition does not consider the needs of the poor. Yet they claim to be pro-poor.Before 2003, and more specifically during the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC)/NDC regimes, only the rich could afford modern health delivery.
President Kufuor and the NPP came out with a way to provide health care for all Ghanaians, hence the NHIS. Even the payment of annual premium was poor-friendly. For the equivalence of price for a domestic fowl or two bottles of beer the premium for the year would be paid.
During Kufuor’s first term the NDC found faults, which were not there, with the NHIS and demonised it with the hope that every Ghanaian would reject it. When it was not working, they started claiming that it was the previous NDC government which introduced, a pilot scheme first. That was far from the truth. It was the Catholic Church which started running a health insurance scheme before the 2000.
When campaigning for elections started in 2004, the NDC visited the grounds and realised that nothing could change minds on the NHIS and so come 2008, the NDC put in its manifesto that when elected into power, they will implement a One-Term-Premium for the NHIS.
The NDC did form government in 2009 but could not implement the One-Term-Premium. Not only that, the NDC watched on as the NHIS eventually collapsed, with all health delivery facility backing out and re-adopting the cash-and-carry system. The poor, the NDC claim to stand for, suffered terribly.
And again, when Nana Addo became president in 2017, the Free SHS policy came into existence. Here again, the NDC lambasted it, claiming that they even started implementing it. Nonetheless, to this day, nothing constructive has been said about the Free SHS, by the NDC.
This policy which was to allow the poor to see their children also go through education and become doctors, economists, bankers and lawyers among many, is being painted black by the NDC. As if to say that the poor should remain where they are and settle for peasant farming, truck driving, palm wine tapping, head porters, labourers, among many.
In all this, the NDC clearly showed that they never favour the poor apart from themselves when they announced to Ghanaians that political parties must be funded by the state.
Readers, if the same party is saying that when elected to govern this nation, it would scrap Ex-gratia, then to add that political parties must be funded would only mean replacing this ex-gratia with paying politicians upfront with amounts many times more than ex-gratia. And this will be at a cost to the state.
Let us look at how much it takes to run a campaign. A CCD-Ghana report which came out on February 2, 2022 put it that the cost of running presidential campaign in Ghana,is $100 million and that of parliamentary campaign is $690,000.00. In Ghana cedi, we are talking of GH¢1.25 billion for the presidential and GH¢ 8,625,000.00 for the parliamentary.
This is where things will get interesting. Since criteria needed for one to qualify to run president is mandatory of having offices in majority of the districts and constituencies, all one has to do is to register to contest the presidency and put up offices in all districts and constituencies, after all the state will foot that bill.
So, here we could have maybe at least twenty presidential candidates made up of members of registered political parties and many independent candidates. The state would have to get at least $2 billion to fund all twenty candidates running about the country and that works out to GH¢25 billion.
Now with the parliamentary candidates, let us again assume that on the average not less than twenty will show up in each constituency and this will mean $690,000.00 times 20 and the results multiplied by 276 constituencies, that is if no additional constituencies are created. Mind you, once there is free lunch, lots of people will come aboard.
On the average for each constituency, an amount of $13.8 million would be disbursed to fund parliamentary candidates and this works out to GH¢172.5 million. The amount to be spent in total will work out to be almost $3.9 billion or over GH¢47.6 billion.
Instead of using this money to fund Free SHS and improve upon the NHIS, to enrich the poor, the NDC is saying that all things being equal, this huge amount must be used every four years, to fund political parties.
Now assuming we have 5,000 politically appointed office holders who will be paid ex-gratia every four years of an average of GH¢300,000.00, the state will only spend GH¢1.5 billion or $120 million, as against GH¢72.6 billion or $5.9 billion to be spent on funding parties.
Is the NDC truly a pro-poor party and truly have Ghana at heart?
Hon Daniel Dugan.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s stance.
