Former President John Dramani Mahama has said the tragedy of the current national situation is that government appears completely unwilling to acknowledge the problems in the Country and even begin the process of addressing them.
According to him, Government is instead confronted with an administration that believes that these major problems can be wished away through PR, sloganeering, divisive rhetoric, populism, and plain political deception.
Speaking in Accra during a public Lecture dubbed “ThankGhana” Mr. Mahama said the problems of the country are legion, and hydra-headed, as he distilled from his interactions with the people of Ghana on this tour, the most pressing problem is the impact of the ailing economy on livelihoods, prospects, and dreams.
He said “The consequences of misguided priorities in economic management has led to unbearable hardships, high unemployment, and the frustration and despair felt by millions of our youth. Other concerns include the bastardization and politicization of state institutions, mounting corruption, rising insecurity, abuse of power, lack of investment in critical infrastructure and abandonment of projects, and heavy-handed governance.”
“Take our present economic state for example. At a time when everyone is crying out over the excruciating hardships brought on by excessive taxation, ever-increasing cost of living, weekly fuel price increases, this government chooses to recite a hackneyed mantra, that there are indicators that show that the economy is doing well.
“Even if we were to overlook the mismatch between these claims and the very visceral suffering and pain people are going through in their daily lives; it beggars belief, that the same people saying this was only six years ago, dismissing any linkage between the welfare of Ghanaians and economic indices. They said, then, that they had visited markets and were not experiencing single-digit prices as the inflation rate would dictate. They insisted then, that the best way to measure the strength or otherwise of the fundamentals of the economy were to look at the exchange rate, for its depreciation would expose the weakness therein. These days, however, even as the exchange rate depreciates to very worrying levels, they say we have strong economic fundamentals.”
Source: Mybrytfmonline.com/Kofi Atakora
