IMF: Ghana’s current economic crisis mandated the country, once again to invite the IMF to help resolve our problems. This will be the eighteenth time since 1966 and the second under a United Party (UP) Tradition regime that Ghana has gone to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In 2003, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government, led by H.E. J.A. Kufuor, went to the IMF to have our debts cancelled, with no conditionalities. In 2022, the NPP government led by H.E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has gone to the IMF, this time for directives on restructuring our economy and most likely acquiring a loan to bounce back.
In such circumstances the IMF is known for placing conditionalities which would rather make applicant nations end up poorer. Some are, ban on employment, retrenchments and cancellation of social interventions, among others.
Whatever the IMF team saw in Ghana, I wish to advise that such conditionalities will not be helpful. They are counter-effective and nations become worse off, a few years after the IMF programme ends. It is so because laid-off staff would attempt entering into the private sector, and face challenges like not enough money to start business or being paid less when they get employed. Due to the destruction of the private sector by Rawlings during the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) eras, Ghana has not got a lot of well established Ghanaian owned businesses to resolve the unemployment market. And most of the foreign owned businesses are slave camps.
Cancellation of social interventions will throw pupils and students out of school; the sick cannot go to the hospital for proper health care and many more complications.
I will plead with the IMF that to get Ghana back on her feet, economically, like it happened during J.A. Kufuor era, it must rather give us exactly what we need to get the economy back. No longer ten per cent of what we need but the full amount.
NPP Conference: Tomorrow, the highest decision-making body in the New Patriotic Party, will meet at a delegates’ conference to elect national executives to manage the affairs of the Party for the next four years.
Already, certain revelations are pointing out to manipulations of the elections. In the end the will of the Party will not be made manifest since certain powers-that-be, are interested in making sure that their choices make it into the national executive team. If these unpatriotic party members succeed in applying all means to get what they want, then Internal Elections 2022 in the NPP will go down as the worst, in the history of the UP Tradition.
First, it was the polling station elections, then constituency elections and in the regional elections came along, where in Accra for instance, huge sums of money and gifts of half pieces of cloth were used to entice delegates in the voting area. I am told it happened in other places. Then came the calculated manipulations of lights going off, when counting of votes were in progress.
In fact, the very things NPP accused the EC and NDC of and which were compiled in that political best-selling book, The Stolen Verdict, is what is now being fully practiced and endorsed in the NPP today.
We hear of delegates albums (internal voter register) being doctored and those who are deem not to support a certain candidate, are been replaced. In order words, names are being deleted from the album. And NPP, once complained bitterly against this same act in regard to the national voter’s register.
It is becoming obvious that some group of people want to control the Party and make it their own. They want the Party which belongs to every member, now to belong to them. They are to choose who should be what in the Party and if anything should go on, it must be by their express approval and not by the decisions of majority of the party members. It is like this way no party member must be put into office or removed from office without the approvals of the powers-that-be.
Unfortunately, this will back fire and shatter the party, which is what the pro-socialist Nkrumahists have been praying for since February 1966.
Going back into history in 1959, the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) government passed a law, the Chief Recognition Bill (CRB) 1959, in which it ensured that no enstoolment or destoolment shall be effective unless it was formally recognised by the government.
Today, a CRB lookalike is being implemented in the UP Tradition – Something which is very alien to it. The result will be obvious. Unlike the CPP which was overthrown, the NPP may lose the numbers during National Elections and the NDC will take over affairs of this country, until such a time that sanity would be restored in the NPP and the right things are done again in accordance with the heralded and enviable characteristics of the UP Tradition.
What is very incomprehensible is that party members some time past, freely voted and elected officers, parliamentary candidates and flag bearers. But why they are being denied that freedom now is something beyond understanding. What are the main reasons for the powers that be, to be very interested in making sure that they have a grip on the Party? Why should some party members be punished for declaring for aspirants of their choice and others left of the hook and even glorified when they declare for aspirants of their choice?
This was what happened and the Party lost a lot of seats in the 2020 General Elections. Many sitting MPs were considered out of favour and either made to lose their primaries or were campaigned against and made unpopular. In the end a lot of seats were lost to the Party. And lessons are not learnt, less than two years after that electoral disaster. Rather the same mistakes are surprisingly decorated and celebrated with all pomp and pageantry.
Tomorrow’s programme is said to begin with voting at 9 am after speeches by the President, the National Chairman and the Treasurer. Results are to be declared by 5 pm, at the latest. I pray that no monkey games and foul plays take place and also no inducement of delegates by ways buying their votes. Let the NPP make this delegates conference one of the best and purest in NPP’s history.
May the Holy Spirit hover over the Accra Sports Stadium and drive away all unclean spirits and forces.
Hon. Daniel Dugan
