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14.01.2013 Feature Article

Cementing The NDC’S Grip On Power Beyond 2016

Cementing The NDCS Grip On Power Beyond 2016
14.01.2013 LISTEN

To my mind, the people of Ghana on the 7th and 8th of December 2012, unequivocally endorsed President John Dramani Mahama and the NDC's efforts towards a better Ghana; regardless of the current huffing and puffing by the opposition New Patriotic Party and their bungling legal team.

There is a certain commonsensical generational approach applied by all men to wooing a woman. They try a few times and if she won't have them, they move on to other passions.

I believe the same approach is needed very badly in the Akuffo Addo household. Ghanaians in 2008 said nay, we will have a better man for a better Ghana, then in 2012, we said it edey be keke, so no need for change.

Instead of conceding defeat, Nana Addo and his advisers unleashed violence on some ordinary Ghanaians going about their lives or in the process of earning a decent wage. Some of the journalist who were brutalised probably voted for the NPP.

The hallmark of a bad loser is to huff, puff, and damage their reputation and that of their ilk in the process before vanishing into oblivion. Sour losers; always lose not only their minds but also the sympathies of onlookers by failing to control how they react to their loss.

Therefore, it must be said that the NPP must re-examine itself or risk losing its place as a viable alternative. Bernard Shaw once said 'that if history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable man must be of learning from experience'; over to you Sir John.

The NDC's victory in the just ended elections, offers the party and its government the opportunity to rule this country for the next 30 years and beyond. However, any chance of doing this depends on how the party and especially government, governs this country.

Ghana, in the next four years and beyond, will see increased revenue from the oil and gas sector, and if government puts in place prudent policies that will ensure growth in our pre-oil sectors to avoid the Dutch disease, this nation and its people will see dramatic socio-economic transformation and its love affair with the NDC will be cast in stone.

In the not so distant past, many pundits predicted the disintegration of the NDC. That prediction was born out of a certain lack of foresight. Now the NDC must not be victim to the same disease.

Foresight has become the great need of the 21st century and as Malcom X once said, 'the future belongs to those who prepare for it today'. The NDC must quickly put its victory behind it and soldier on. Come November/December 2016, if the party is able to achieve 65-75% of its manifesto pledges, it is certain of victory.

The government must empower economic growth through a new wave of infrastructural development through the building of new roads&bridges/rail/airports across the length and breadth of this country.

This will ensure money in the pockets of unskilled labour, with a long term effect of greater access, movement of people and most importantly movement of goods of all shades.

If this is achieved within the shortest possible time, alongside total electricity coverage as promised in the NDC manifesto, expansion of the education sector to ensure greater access and quality through the elimination of all schools under trees, 250 new community SHS, new teacher training colleges and specialist kindergarten training as well as increased health care coverage through the building of health centres for every populations of 500 across the country, increased training of health professionals through new health colleges.

There is a famous saying that life is water, both urban and rural folks need water and our nation is blessed with abundant water resources, therefore, this needs to be dealt with holistically in the context of spatial planning with a national policy framework and action plan.

Mr President must deal comprehensively with Youth unemployment through special socio-economic intervention programmes such as the youth enterprise fund, introducing a compulsory mentoring and apprenticeship programme under a new deal for youth to be rolled out for all young people from JHS to University level to give them hands on experience of work and helping to shape their career choices through both the private and the public sector, introduce as part of this new deal programme a career counselling office for all SHS and bringing Lesdep, Yesdec, MASLOC, under one umbrella organisation to ensure their effectiveness and reduce duplication. Franklin D. Roosevelt once said that 'we cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.

We must use foresight and the benefit of hindsight to adopt good practice models from the Western world, where the idiom 'youth as the future of the nation' is not a cliché but deliberate policy and strategy are introduced to equip the younger generation.

In England for instance every local authority has a children and young people's plan/strategy and its implementation is reviewed on a yearly basis with young people involved alongside technocrats in the review process.

Fundamentally, the NDC must take care of its own; it must strengthen its base through effective and targeted development. The Volta region and Northern Ghana which have similar development challenges must see significant social transformation.

The President must make a personal commitment and challenge himself to bridge the North/South development gap, which undoubtedly will curb North/South migration, using SADA as an effective tool.

There is the need to transform northern Ghana and make it attractive to both foreign and local investors, reversing the North/South migration by attracting more manufacturing industries to the North and making Central Gonja District an inland industrial hub.

This to my mind can be done by ensuring good roads within the north to increase intra-North trade and movement and from the South to the North to increase North/South trade, use SADA as a tool to make northern Ghana the real food basket of the nation, put up some of the biggest food markets in the North.

The development of these markets should not be limited to the north alone as Ghanaians love their markets as everybody loves to buy and sell, give them state of the art, world class, health and safety conscious markets and watch local market women drive this economy.

The NDC must work relentlessly in the next four years to make the four swing regions, its strongholds and gaining parity or taking back the Eastern region.

The Central, Western and Brong Ahafo regions and to some extent greater Accra have similar development challenges to the Volta and the Northern parts of the Country. In the case of the western region, there is a peculiar case of very bad roads in a resource rich region.

Therefore, rolling out the western corridor roads projects as 'roads of the future' using technology and material that will ensure longevity and ensuring effective access to health care will cement the NDC's relationship with the region. Replicating the SADA model across the other zones will ensure targeted bottom up development.

To my mind even replacing RCC's with development agencies is a much more cost effective, development centred approach to governance as the RCC concept is out of sync with effective decentralisation. In my opinion the RCC's are a needless bureaucratic layer and their coordinating role can easily be absorbed by other organisations or layers of the bureaucratic chain.

Many Ghanaians believe and are praying the President lives up to their expectation of doing a good job for Ghana. However, the success of the President is linked with the success and effectiveness of his men on the ground (DCE's). Ghana at this point in time, needs effective, highly educated, development and political aware local leadership.

Therefore, there is the need to have what I will term – HSQL Approach – that is the highly skilled and qualified leaders approach. With this approach, the President must nominate competent, highly educated and development centred DCE's.

These should have what it takes to operationalise the new decentralisation policy framework and action plan and champion local development with little supervision. The days of the barely educated local party man becoming DCE are numbered. Local communities deserve strong, focused, development centred local leaders who by themselves can dream up visions for developing their local areas.

However, these local leaders must be given the necessary tools to help them lead the socio-economic transformation of their localities. The dawn is here when the nation and government must recognise decentralisation and local governance as the final frontier to sustainable development.

Therefore, local authorities must be given even more power and flexibility in their operations, given more financial and human resource. In my opinion, government must allocate 50-70% incrementally, of national revenue to local authorities to spearhead the transformation of this country.

In addition, government must give local authorities the mandate to oversee the development and provision of housing schemes to house the nation's growing middle classes. Local assemblies can and should be empowered to undertake PPP agreements in the housing sector.

This will ensure a bottom up, community driven approach to solving the housing deficit. Come 2016, should local housing schemes begin to spring up everywhere across the nation for teachers, nurses, and all other public servants on flexible mortgages as was done in the past through SSNIT, the NDC will have no trouble in winning a resounding victory.

Significantly, there is the need to strengthen the party and its structures and institutions especially the Youth and women wings, introducing the party school, consciously targeting first time voters in secondary schools. Undertaking special ideological summer camps, seeing to the proliferation of groups within the party that are targeted at attracting metrosexual men and women and Ghana's next generation of thinkers and leaders to the party as well as proactively ensuring a strong constituency and branch presence.

Currently, there seem a certain disconnection exist between the grassroots of the party and its leadership. The NDC needs to be proactive in mobilising and engaging local people at all times not only when elections are coming.

The party must put in place visionary leaders at its next congress and it must develop its futuring skills to sharpen its ability to assess the probabilities, anticipate consequences, and choose ever-wiser courses of action that can help it to entrench itself at the helm of driving this great nations transformation.

Last but not least, the party must take advantage of the likeability factor of the President to renew itself, to win over the floating voters who voted not because they have sympathies for the NDC but the President. Our people say a chick that will grow into a cock can be spotted the very day it hatches.

The President by his actions even as a care taker President and even as a parliamentarian won him admiration. He comes across to many a Ghanaian, as one who values nationhood and national unity above political affiliation.

His decision to participate in the IEA debates as well as the move to the flag staff house and more recently his appointments so far portend well for mother Ghana and NDC especially. The party has an asset in the President and it must utilise that asset judiciously.

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