Posted:Daily Guide |Tuesday, 06 April 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
Ras MubarakMohammed Abdulai Mubarak aka Ras Mubarak, a youth activist of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and a close associate of Former President Jerry John Rawlings, says President Atta Mills and his government have failed Ghanaians.
According to him, current events in government were nothing but huge disappointments for many who had hoped for a better Ghana under President Atta Mills.
He was therefore more than convinced that the Mills Administration had failed to exploit its opportunities and carry the nation along the path of development.
In a statement, Mubarak noted that “the government has alienated public support and there is a sense of unease even among Prof. Mills' uncritical supporters”, laying emphasis on the fact that “government has been shooting from the hip on a number of issues”.
He expressed the belief that the increasing spate of peaceful and violent protests against the government by the party youth was a verdict on Prof. Mills' failures, noting that the noble professor’s “reputation as an honest man is not in doubt. Even his most virulent critics know that he is a man of integrity, but he is a disastrous leader”.
Mubarak seemed to have summed up the concerns of many Ghanaians including his mentor, Jerry John Rawlings, who equally shared similar views about the Mills Administration.
This, according to Mubarak, was evident in the fact that “in spite of getting interest rates down, President Mills has not been able to turn round the Ghanaian economy”, saying “Health Insurance is in trouble and he has been weak on national security”.
That notwithstanding, the vociferous NDC activist said “we are still far from being able to finance our development and have turned to the IMF/World Bank for the same bailouts and wrong-headed guidelines that haven't brought us much since independence”, stressing that Ghanaians were still paying high taxes in return for inefficient social services.
For this reason, he noted that “there is danger in doing little or moving slowly to solve the nation's problems”, asking the NDC as a party “to begin to look for a successor who can save the nation”.
This, he said, was because “if the NDC allows the growing deluge to continue, it would get a sound beating from the opposition in the next election”.
According to him, the only way to avert this impending calamity on the nation was to have a candidate in 2012 who could answer the problems of all Ghanaians, thereby ruling Mills out of the 2012 ticket of the NDC.
“The NDC has an obligation to give the nation a bold leader,” he noted, emphasizing that the NDC “would be a dead duck if President Mills led it into the 2012 contest” since “he no longer has the grassroots support and is certainly unpopular with young voters”.
In the eyes of the youth of NDC, Mubarak said, President Mills had failed to rise to the occasion, hence would not have the support of many members of the party across the country.
He intimated that there were irrefutable reasons why Mills could not lead the NDC into victory in 2012, insisting on keeping some of the reasons to himself for the sake of his reverence for the President.
“The NDC needs a candidate who when elected President in 2012 can give hope to all Ghanaians; someone who can reconnect with lost constituencies in the NDC; someone who is the best candidate of either main political parties and a unifier since our country deserves a President who can think anew the theory for a 21st century social democracy" and get things done whilst the sun was still up.
Ras Mubarak argued that the electoral victory of 2008/9 was an opportunity for the NDC as a party to fight for those who could not fight for themselves; to give hope to the youth who, he claimed, were let down by the NPP, indicating that President Mills made huge mistakes by ignoring some persons who could have helped him bring succour to his government and the country.
“He has recently alienated his constituency and that is quite a shoot from the hip,” he noted.
Under the current circumstances, the party activist said, the youth in the NDC felt the ladder of opportunity had been kicked away by their own government, since in his own words, “many feel it has become hard to make a way up under the Mills government”.
Mubarak had a word of caution for President Mills and his administration: “If government does not listen to what the youth of the National Democratic Congress think is wrong with them, they (the young men and women of the party) won’t listen to government when government tells them what is wrong with them.
Moving slowly is incompatible with our reputation as a party that gets things done; it is unworthy of the NDC.”