Kufuor Has Achieved Nothing - Dan Lartey

The man described by others as the political comedian of our time, Mr. Dan Lartey, leader of the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), has described President Kufuor as a failure.

All these three and half years, he (Kufuor) sat down, doing nothing, he said.

"He only wasted the three and half years achieving nothing," he declared at the launch of his party's manifesto for the 2004 election at the Great Hall of KNUST in Kumasi.

The GCPP flagbearrer, who is confident of winning Election 2004, promised sound economic practices.

Lartey said the Kufuor administration was the victim of deceit by the G7, which induced Ghana to go HIPC in return for development aid and cancellation of debts at completion point.

He blamed the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and New Patriotic Party (NPP) for running the nation's economy aground, due to the adoption of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank economic packages of Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) by the (NDC) and Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) by the NPP.

According to him, for the government to rely on IMF/World Bank initiative to draw the country's yearly budget for 12 consecutive years, underscored the naivety of the two governments.

"Ghana is at the threshold of socio-economic collapse and needs heavy medication for recovery through effective and profound budgeting," he stressed, noting that it was the plan and machination of the few rich countries of the world to introduce measures and tariffs governing World Trade to the disadvantage of poor countries.

"By this, 85% of the world's population live in the poor countries but their share of international trade is only 25%, with their external debt at 50billion.... currently the debt burden is 2.6 trillion" he stated, adding that between 1982 and 2003, the poor countries paid 5.4 trillion USD in debt service, which according to him, signified that the debt owed had been paid to the rich countries twice as much.

Lartey stressed that the rich countries' G7 designed exploitation of the poor countriesG77 of resources of their own land through international trade barriers such as WTO and Free Trade Agreements.

As a result, he said, the nation's plight had now multiplied as transportation, electricity, health care, insurance levy and school fees had increased astronomically.

"The nation is crying for a relief of predicaments brought up by the NDC and worsened by the NPP administration."

He emphasized that the GCPP, with such foreknowledge of the nation's problems, would shift from the policy of HIPC to the policy of domestication to domestically generate resources for development.

Mr. Domestication, as he is popularly known, explained that money for running the government would be secured from national financial consortium, domestic credit systems and international revenue sources rather than begging for alms from foreign countries as is with the Kufuor administration.

The GCPP flagbearrer noted that out of 47 years of Ghana's independence, 9 years were brilliantly and efficiently managed by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah while the remaining 38 years had been wasted as there had been no development in terms of productivity, unemployment, collapse of industries and high inflation."

He stressed that when the GCPP was voted into power, money for development and running of government would come from domestic resources, not from foreign sources and promised that the GCPP would arrive at a per capita income level apar with that of Malaysia by tracing the Malaysian line to boost the economy.

Touching on tourism, he said the industry would be pursued vigorously to achieve the ultimate potentiality in the trade. On constitutional reforms, he said the second chamber of legislature should be an embodiment of separation of state and government should be clearly identified.

He urged that the employers' associations be recognized as well as farmer/fishermen's associations, Chamber of Mines and Asoociation of Ghana Industries.