Politicians and phantom promises

On Monday, January 16, this year, the veteran prolific writer, Mr. I.K. Gyasi digested Nana Akufo-Addo's campaign promise to make secondary education free in Ghana, if he is elected as President.

The Chronicle columnist noted in his article that tuition from primary up to University level is virtually free, and that the NPP flagbearer should tell Ghanaians how he is going to bear the rest of the cost associated with secondary education.

It is important to note that it is not only the veteran writer who has raised concerns over the promise being made by the opposition. Few months ago, The Chronicle also raised the issue in its editorial and called on Nana Addo to come out and explain how he is going to fund it.

I am, therefore, happy that Mr. Gyasi, who is also an educationist has added his voice to the call for proper explanation on how this ambitious policy is going to be implemented.

Politicians always behave like the proverbial animal which has different ways of crying when it is trapped, and also when it is set free. A hungry politician would always come out with phantom promises he or she knows can never be fulfilled, and I have historical evidence to back my argument.

Soon after the late Dr. Hilla Limann's government was sworn into office, a former military pilot by name Jerry John Rawlings started attacking him for allowing corruption to permeate every fabric of the Ghanaians society. In fact, he based his decision to overthrow the constitutionally elected government that he himself put in place, on the corruption allegation.

But after gaining power and later turning himself into a constitutionally elected President, some of his Ministers became the worst offenders of the same crime. At a point in time, he issued a white paper to exonerate some of the Ministers who had been found guilty of corruption by the Commission of Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ).

When he was hungry for power, the Dzelukope born military strongman did everything possible to convince Ghanaians that the Limann government was corrupt, but after grabbing what he was looking for, he started singing a different tune, to the extent of setting free his own Ministers caught in the  corruption web.

Enter ex President Kufuor, the Atwima Dabaa born legal practitioner. After being in opposition for many, many years, the man was simply desperate for power and did not care a hoot about some of his criticisms of the Rawlings government.

Whilst on one of his campaign tours, Mr. Kufuor lifted a gallon and asked his audience why a petrol in such a small can should callously be sold for ¢6,000. After brainwashing Ghanaians to believe that Mr. Rawlings was a monster, Mr. Kufuor did not only raise the price of petrol after assumption of office in 2001, but to as high as ¢20,000.

At the time he was leaving office, petrol was being sold for GH¢5.40 per gallon as against 60GP that he criticized in 2000. The 2000 election manifesto of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) also promised to make the District Chief Executive positions elective, but after Ghanaians had bought the idea and voted for the party, that promise was never fulfilled.

Mr. Kufuor also promised to fight corruption with the alacrity it deserves, but when he became President, he was always asking journalists to provide evidence, before his government would investigate such complaints.

Meanwhile, he did not tell the same journalists during his campaign that they must provide evidence before he would investigate any corrupt allegation. His Ministers and other government appointees were also grabbing state lands with careless abandon.

Those who questioned this bad practice were attacked from all fronts. That is President Kufuor and NPP for you. They hoodwinked Ghanaians to vote for them, after which they started singing different tunes.

After reneging on the aforementioned promises, Ghanaians thought the time had come for them to go back for the NDC, headed by the law and tax professor, John Evans Atta Mills. As Kufuor did in 2000, the then candidate Mills also started doing the petrol politics by persistently telling the voters that the Kufuor government had loaded the price build up for petrol with so many taxes, thus making the product expensive.

Led by Kwesi Pratt and veteran Ato Ahwoi, the NDC used the Committee for Joint Action (CJA) as a smokescreen to organize series of demonstration against prices of petroleum products, thereby making Kufuor and his Ministers look like people who did not care about the welfare of Ghanaians.

I attended some of the fora organized by the CJA when I was the Western Regional Correspondent of The Chronicle and heard some of the issues raised, especially by Mr. Ato Ahwoi, about the petrol price build up.

Candidate Mills himself joined some of the demonstrations to protest against the high cost of petrol. The NDC and candidate Mills also wrote in their 2008 election manifesto a promise of one time payment for all National Health Insurance (NHIS) subscribers.

Though Professor Badu Akosa warned against such a promise because it would not be workable, NDC and candidate Mills insisted that they could do it. Like Kufuor's case, Ghanaians again bought the idea and voted for the Ekumfi Otuam born law Professor.

President Mills and his government have been in office for three years now, but nothing has been done to implement the one time premium payment policy, as contained in the manifesto.

The Atta Mills government has now been confronted with the reality that it is impossible to implement such a policy in a poverty stricken country like Ghana.

The big question is, if Ghanaians were asked to pay GH¢1,500 across board as one time NHIS premium, how many of us can afford that money. Instead of admitting that they have deceived Ghanaians and apologise accordingly, some of the hot-headed people in government are still insisting that the one time premium payment will be implemented.

The petrol prices which candidate Mills criticized as being too exorbitant and that the Kufuor government was insensitive to the plight of Ghanaians, has not only being increased by his administration, but the subsidy that cushioned the consumer has also been withdrawn.

As CJA did in the past, the Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG) is also threatening to go on a demonstration to protest against the withdrawal of the subsidy by the Atta Mills government.

With this 'promise and fail' syndrome that has characterized our politics, one would have thought that politicians have learnt their lessons, but alas, that is not the case.

Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo, the NPP flagbearer is also promising to make secondary education free in Ghana. Meanwhile, he has not told the voters how he is going to fund that ambitious policy.

Granted that Ghana has 200 senior High Schools, and each school has on average 1,000 students, the total student population would be 200,000.  Again, if each student spends on average GH¢500 per term on food, books and other items, this would bring the total figure to GH¢300,000,000 per each academic.

It is instructive to note that this is a conservative figure. Implementation of free secondary education could go as high as GH¢600,000,000 per each academic year.

The big question is -where is Nana Addo and NPP going to raise this money from?  I do not think the total budget for the Ministry of Education could match the sponsorship of free education at the secondary school level, yet this is what Nana Addo is promising Ghanaians.

To me, it is high time the NPP flagbearer comes out to clarify what he meant by free secondary school education. As I.K. Gyasi noted, tuition is already free, so we need to know whether the free would cover boarding, books and other fees paid by the students or their parents.

Ghanaians are no more prepared to accept another promise and fail from a politician.

To me, this policy, like the failed one term premium payment for the NHIS promised by the NDC, would not be sustainable. In simple terms, the economy cannot support it because we are already running a deficit budget.

To avoid some of these phantom promises in future, I suggest to Parliament to enact a law that would make all the promises made by the political parties legally binding, so that Ghanaians can hold them accountable if they fail to implement them.

Until this is done, politicians would continue to deceive the good people of this country, with the intention of just grabbing power.