Bawumia Fires NDC ‘Stop The Lies’

Dr Mahamudu Bawumia handing over Ghana’s donation to President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone

Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia has been compelled by vile propaganda directed at him to fire a salvo at the opposition and minority National Democratic Congress (NDC).

It follows claim by the deputy minority leader, James Klutse Avedzi, who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ketu North Constituency in the Volta Region, to the effect that the vice president had made a sudden                  U-turn on his position of the issue of borrowing.

According to him, Dr Bawumia had said during the electioneering campaign last year that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) would not borrow when it came to power.

Mr Avedzi accused the Veep of making a U-turn on the issue of borrowing, insisting that Dr. Bawumia had condemned the NDC government for borrowing but had said the NPP government is also going to borrow for development.

“The vice president… while he was the running mate for the NPP, was emphatic on the issue about borrowing in Ghana, saying that the country needs not borrow and that we have the resources here in Ghana and that when they win power they will not borrow,” Avedzi was quoted as having said on Accra-based Citi FM.

According to Dr. Bawumia, he had never mounted any platform to condemn government's borrowing but rather spoke against excessive borrowing by the then Mahama-led NDC government which did not yield meaningful dividends for the country, but plunged Ghana into a debt crisis.

Unbridled borrowing by Mahama's NDC government left a colossal debt for the NPP administration to the tune of over GH¢123 billion in just eight years from the GH¢9 billion it inherited in 2009.

In the 2017 budget about GH¢14 billion has been earmarked to service debt, leaving no space for spending on development projects.

A statement issued from the Flagstaff House and signed by the Director of Communications at the office of the vice president, Frank Agyei-Twum, said, “The Office of the Vice President would like to state for the record that the above statement attributed to the Vice-President by the   deputy minority leader (and subsequently by many NDC communicators) is a complete and utter fabrication.”

That, he said, was because “The Vice President's speeches, lectures and statements on the economy over the years are a matter of public record” for all to ascertain the veracity of the false claims and therefore urged him to “argue on facts and not fabrications.

“We are therefore challenging the deputy minority leader (and the other NDC communicators) to immediately provide the evidence to back up their claim. They cannot provide any such evidence because the Vice-President has never made such a statement. To deliberately fabricate statements in an attempt to attack your political opponent is an exercise in desperation and intellectual dishonesty.”

As politicians, the vice president counseled that, “It is important that we elevate the discourse and argue based on facts and not on fabrications and outright lies” and therefore advised the deputy minority leader and his likes in the opposition National Democratic Congress to, as it were, “Go back and take the time to read the Vice President's lectures as well as speeches and try to criticize based on the statements contained therein.”

By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent