body-container-line-1
17.04.2009 NDC

Assessment of NDC`s 100 days Mills has achieved nothing – PC

17.04.2009 LISTEN
By Charles Takyi-Boadu - Ghanaian Chronicle

Anti corruption campaigner and Member of Parliament for the Esikuma-Odoben-Brakwa constituency in the Central region, Hon. P.C Appiah Ofori believes that President Mills and his National Democratic Congress (NDC) has achieved nothing within the hundred days that they gave themselves to fulfil some key promises in their party's manifesto.

He has, therefore, asked President Mills and members of his government to be circumspect in their promises and dealings with the electorate, since the Ghanaian has become discerning enough to differentiate between the truth and lies. Mr. Appiah Ofori, who is well noted for speaking his mind on national issues and a renowned anti-corruption crusader, with his own New Patriotic Party (NPP) sometimes at the receiving end of his tirades, made this known in an exclusive interview with The Chronicle. Asked what would be his assessment of the Mills administration after its hundred days in office, the legislator had this to say, “He has done nothing, nothing.”

According to him, this is evident in the fact that the incumbent government has not been able to fulfill any of the promises it made to the teeming Ghanaian populace during the electioneering campaign. To him, the NDC might have thought that the hundred days period was long enough to fulfill their pledges, so they decided to make huge promises.

He therefore advised President Mills and NDC as a party that “in future, they have to think twice before making any such promises.” “They said they were going to ensure that all schools access the School Feeding programme, have they done it?” he asked rhetorically.

He recalled that during his campaign, then candidate Mills promised the people of the Central region, specifically fishermen in that area, that when voted into power as President of the Republic, he would virtually give them free Premix fuel or at a very little cost, “have they done it,” he again asked.

Apart from that, the anti-corruption campaigner noted that Candidate Mills made a lot of promises which he has reneged on and, therefore, urged him and his government to “in future sit down and ponder over what they will be able to achieve within a specific period of time, and what will take a long time to achieve, so that they don't make empty promises.”

Hon. Appiah Ofori said the government should not have committed itself in making such vain promises knowing very well that it was yet to prepare its budget.

Even so, he stressed that the budget was approved at the tail end of March, thereby making it either extremely difficult or impossible to implement such ostentatious promises. As a result, he asked Ghanaians to be cautious of President Mills and his NDC administration.

Though the President has rated himself eighty percent, which translates into eight over ten, the anti-corruption campaigner said left to him alone, he would give President Mills and his administration forty percent.

However, the founder and leader of the United Renaissance Party, Charles Kofi Wayo, who had been associated one time or the other with the two leading parties in the country, disagrees with P.C Appiah Ofori's submissions.

By African standards, he emphasised that hundred days would not be enough to judge an administration. He preferred to give President Mills and his administration another ninety days before he would pass any judgement.

Compared to the previous NPP administration, he believes that President Mills has done far better than what former President John Agyekum Kufuor did within his first hundred days in office.

“In Kufuor's hundred days, he was by this time fixing his house and lying that somebody was doing it for him, and Kufuor would have travelled eight times, but Atta Mills hasn't done that, Atta Mills is far, far better”, he noted.

body-container-line