Expenditure on transition is sickening

President Mills

The Republic of Ghana has no justification for spending £796,000 (¢361,924.41) on the recent transition. I find it offensive for the government to attempt to justify this kind of spending.

Building a solid democracy is very expensive and it is important to support all attempts to build it. The cost may be too high and since we've generally agreed that democracy is what is best for us, we must endeavour to invest in it. What we must reject is wastefulness. So far the amount spent on the honoraria for the transitional team is simply wasteful.

I am disappointed and surprised by attempts to defend this rather extravagant expenditure. The so-called ordinary man and woman would make sacrifices, feel the pain, swallow their pride, bite the bullet and sometimes take a bullet for the country but certainly not our average politician. What has happened to service to nation?

The pledge by President Mills to avoid profligate spending is seriously threatened by this show of insensitivity to feelings of the people whose sweat and sacrifices are financing this luxury.

You cannot blame voters who are apathetic to politics and elections. All over the world, there are citizens who feel politics is about filling people's ears with mocking promises. Recent announcement on the amount spent on the transitional team only echoes such sentiments.

One of the difficult challenges facing our nation is education and attempts not to subsidise education is a declaration of war on our civil liberties.

I have an uncontrolled enmity towards what right wing politics is about but one thing anyone cannot help but appreciate is the number of people the Kufour led right leaning government sponsored to undertake further studies at home and abroad. The government invested in students and even if it had been done selectively (members only), it is an investment we can all be proud of. We can blame them for not building polytechnics and universities to absorb the number of students qualifying for tertiary education but we have to give them credit for investing in people.

There's no more honour to citizens than governments financing education. I have painstakingly look at the backgrounds of the gentlemen and women who served on both sides of the transition and found out rather shockingly that many of them had the benefit of government sponsored education. One would imagine a left wing (social democrats) party would be quicker to help keep people better educated and not the other way around.

Education is a priority and if Ghana could find the means to spend nearly a million pounds on something as important as a transition, it could find the means to sponsor and subsidise something equally as important as education. It is the working class members of our society who are paying through the nose for the education of their children and they have a right to government assistance in softening their daily struggles.

We cannot in the face of economic challenges cut budget on an essential service as education and claim the former government overspent budget for scholarships and grants so no one rightfully qualified to earn a scholarship can't get it.

Economics is not my area of expertise, but I am a student of history and I know from history that in times of economic difficulty the most plausible economic decision is to “spend our way out of a recession” as Brown, Zuma and Obama are doing in their respective countries. This doesn't mean government shouldn't cut back on frills like honoraria for members of the transitional team or a presidential palace but we risk deepening poverty, and failing to meet campaign pledges if the NDC ignored spending on education and other essential services we can't afford to reduce budget on. From Washington to Johannesburg, London to Madrid, left leaning governments have increased spending in the public sector except Ghana.

Seven hundred and ninety six thousand pounds can finance the education of about one hundred Ghanaian students admitted to study for a Masters in the UK and more than one thousand students admitted to study for a Bachelors at the University of Ghana or KNUST.

Taxpayers have every reason to be angry over profligate spending and I am angered by the government's inability to support the tuition fees of students (including yours truly) because a “previous government had overspent on budgetary allocation for scholarships” and for that matter can't afford to grant fresh scholarships. We should be offended by this insensitivity towards investing in people.

Ras Mubarak
Broadcaster & Publicist for NDC Europe
[email protected]