Posted: Daily Guide |Thursday, 15 April 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
VICE PRESIDENT John Dramani Mahama is obviously not happy with how party foot soldiers want to determine the direction of the country with their continuous agitations.
He even struggled to find appropriate words to describe the kind of foot soldiers that exist in the country.
According to him “the kinds of foot soldiers we have in Ghana are different. They will want to join the party to help to you get into power but once the party gets into power, they must be served first”.
He believes that the kind of foot soldiers in Ghana “have no sense of sacrifice”.
This was when he had the opportunity to speak at the launch of the Centre for Freedom and Accuracy (CFA).
Whilst appreciating the fact that the issue of foot soldiers is a problem that faces all political parties, he wondered the extent to which they have taken their activities and operations, demanding the removal of government appointees without cause.
“In my mind, a foot soldier or cadre is one that is prepared to sacrifice for the organisation in order to keep the fortunes of the organization, either by continuing to win political power alike”, he said.
The Vice President therefore wondered why some of these so-called foot soldiers, particularly in the NDC ,have become an albatross on the necks of successive governments to the extent that they even want to determine who is to be appointed to a particular office and who should be sacked or not.
“If you wake up and foot soldiers demand that everybody in an appointed office under a previous regime must forcibly be removed by locking up NHIS office, locking NYEP office, locking up all kinds of offices and ejecting people; then you the foot soldiers get appointed, then you must know that you have a 4year mandate”, he noted.
Vice President John Dramani Mahama also expressed worry about the growing trend of businesses collapsing whenever there is a change in government because of the often quoted phrase “he is not one of us”.
“As long as the political pendulum continues to swing and they exact their pound of flesh on indigenous businesses or even foreign businesses that we perceive not to be our political allies, we would have nothing to show for it”, he explained.
Whilst he admitted that the party’s manifestos are produced for electioneering, he noted that “once you win an election and come into government, your party manifesto does not become the national vision of the party, but once the party gets elected, they must translate that party manifesto into a strategic policy direction or into a vision that the whole nation can buy into”.
Based on that, he stated that everybody can help push the vision forward, “so as quickly as possible, manifestoes should be translated into strategic visions that the whole country can buy into so that we can as one move forward”.
For this reason, the Vice President stressed the need for all political parties, businesses and institutions like the Chambers of Commerce and the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) to diagnose the problem and come out with a prescription to insulate businesses from collapsing every time there is a change in government.
On his part, former Presidential Spokesperson, Andrews Awuni, who happens to be the Executive Director of the Centre for Freedom and Accuracy (CFA), said the organisation is dedicated to the promotion and defense of free enterprise everywhere and especially in Ghana.
The CFA looks forward to working with government and the corporate community to deepen the culture of free enterprise in the country and remove residual doubts and suspicions about the private sector.
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