What has Team Akufo-Addo practically accomplished thus far beyond its rally-ground talk?

Folks, now that there is a clash of interests, ideas, thoughts, positions, and everything in the NPP camp that put Akufo-Addo in power, what exactly can one say is this government's accomplishment, more than 18 months in office?

I am asking for practical; evidence to prove that since entering the Presidency, Team Akufo-Addo has given Ghanaians what has improved their living standards. I don't want any theory or boring list of promises. Neither should anybody go the way of the blame game. What is the practical evidence is all I am asking for!

(As the perpetual liar called Bawumia has quickly turned to comparative analysis on the basis of raw data to suggest that Team Akufo-Addo has outperformed the NDC administration(s) just 18 months in office, can Team Akufo-Addo turn to its accomplishments in that timeframe versus how the NDC governments functioned?).

The discordant tunes now being sung from within about its flagship promise regarding the free SHS education makes me wonder what at all this team of empty braggarts is doing, borrowing and wasting the tax-payers' money on what doesn't bear fruit.

The rush with which it launched the free SHS created the impression that it knew how to manage affairs so there won't be any glitch or hitch. Unfortunately, the very person charged with ensuring discipline in the use of funds to support such a venture is crying out loud and suggesting an alternative that justifies the NDC's stance. (See https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Free-SHS-could-be-targeted-instead-of-wholesale-Ofori-Atta-671590).

What must be happening? A shipwreck all too soon? Or a ploy for the government to adopt a shameful way-out-of-the-dead-end instead of pursuing its free SHS programme to the full as originally envisioned and presented to Ghanaians to woo them at Election 2016? And as vehemently supported by his team of double-dealers all this while despite the cracks therein?

(I hear the caterers in the School-Feeding Programme are gearing up for a "naked" demonstration at the Flagstaff House in demand for payment of arrears. I hope these distressed people will not be branded as NDC supporters and disposed of. They were the very people recruited by the NPP apparatus who are now seeing things beyond their noses.).

What Team Akufo-Addo is playing with now as the free SHS crumbles (the double-track gimmick) exposes them for the confidence tricksters that they are. It tells us in a plain language that they had no plan based on conscience and patriotism (let alone empathy for the poor) to move Ghana out of the woods. Everything coming from them is either on an ad hoc basis or is an after-thought, which hurts more than it can heal.

It is interesting that even in the NPP camp, there is absolute concern and apprehension at the way things are happening. Suddenly, the armada of NPP communicators has vanished. None is mounting any media platform to defend whatever Team Akufo-Addo is doing. The Damascus experience has set in all too soon. Never has it happened before in the annals of Ghana's political history that such communicators would go dumb as reality sinks!!

We are privy to complaints regarding the bitterness in their camp as Akufo-Addo runs his government of "family and friends". The commentators not belonging there are left to their own, poorer than they were before being cajoled to sing loud Akufo-Addo's song of redemption.

They are also the first to damn the perpetual liar Bawumia for claiming that the NPP government's prudent measures have put money in the pockets of Ghanaians. Which Ghanaians told him so?

All over the place, there is one scandal or the other here and there, which is swept under the rug. Is that the "change" that the 53% Ghanaians beguiled at Election 2016 voted for?

As if unaware of how the tide flows, Akufo-Addo and Bawumia are still thumping their chests as succeeding in doing in just 18 months what the NDC under Rawlings, Mills, and Mahama couldn't do. What is that accomplishment?

I don 't want to believe that they are even unable to implement their own flagship promise of free SHS education. The truth that they fear---and which makes them to desperately dig in--is that failure to do so will send them off the scene, no matter how they manipulate the situation or what their grand ambitions are to be retained in power at Election 2020. It is one thing being loud-mouthed about one's capabilities while in opposition and another accomplishing what will prove that boast right.

So far, all that this lame-duck government has used as a straw to hang on to is the shameless hot-headed (or pig-headed?) rhetoric of castigating Mahama for their woes. Other than that, they are shamelessly re-naming or commissioning and re-commissioning projects constructed by Mahama. Nothing new coming from them. Is this one too a government to support?

In the grossest ingenuous manner, it is even imposing taxes and redesigning taxes that it claimed to have abolished in its nauseating “Asempa Budget” to worsen the situation in the business sector while claiming vexatiously to be business-friendly. What chicanery!!

As I have already said in previous commentaries, the time will soon come when Ghanaians will line up on the streets to hoot at Akufo-Addo and Bawumia wherever they pass. It happened to Busia and will be repeated in our time as the dust settles for Ghanaians to sift the chaff from the grain. I am waiting for that moment.

I shall return…
By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor
(E-mail: [email protected] )
Wednesday, July 25, 2018