Remove Mills: JJ's Boy Warns NDC

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.”

Sex Scandal Hits MP

Posted: Daily Guide |Thursday, 01 April 2010

By Charles Takyi-Boadu
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP for Ho Central, Captain George Nfojoh (Rtd), is in hot waters, as a 23-year-old woman who prefers to give her name only as Sylvia, has accused him of forcibly having sex with her at gun-point.

Though the MP admitted knowing the woman and her father, who from all indications is a close pal, he has simply sought to deny her claims.

The Ho Central MP’s only defence has been that the lady is out to cause mischief and blackmail him, since he could not meet her demand for a certain amount of cash to buy cosmetics to fill her shop- a suggestion Sylvia has flatly rejected.

She told Joy News yesterday that she has no intension whatsoever of maligning him except that she feels insulted by Captain Nfojoh whom she claimed has objectified her to satisfy his sexual desires without recourse to her emotions and feelings.

Meanwhile, the lady has denied having a relationship with the two-term legislator, insisting, “If it was a love relationship, the man will not be doing it like that”; asking rhetorically, “How can you be treating your girlfriend like this?”

Though she claims to have a video footage of the good old Captain naked in his ‘birthday suit’, which is circulating in the media, Sylvia is yet to report her ordeal to the police.

When DAILY GUIDE contacted him yesterday, Captain Nfojoh, who sounded remorseful, said he could not tell whether Sylvia has a hidden agenda against him, since according to him, he cannot fathom why she has not thought it wise to inform the police or her parents about the issue; but rather found solace in the media.

For that matter, he declined to make any further comments since according to him, he wants the issue to die.

He claims to have reported the lady’s conduct to her father.

But Sylvia, who seems troubled by the tortuous ordeal she allegedly suffered at the hands of the beleaguered MP, insists that he forced her to bed, raising issues of abuse of her fundamental human rights.

What seems to annoy her the most is the fact that the ‘honourable’ MP has not given her a single pesewa for the ‘forced sexual service’ and yet uses her as and when he wants.

She talked about how on two separate occasions, Captain Nfojoh held a pistol to her head in order to satisfy his fleeting sexual desire.

She narrated that Captain Nfojoh, who lives in the same neighbourhood with her in Tema, has made her his sex machine and occasionally sneaks into her rented apartment, under the cover of darkness, to satisfy his unquenchable sexual desire.

In all instances that the MP had an affair with her, Sylvia noted that he failed to use a condom and whenever she insisted, he declined after which he would give her prescription for a certain contraceptive without giving her a dime.

“Because I didn’t want him to harm me, I agreed and said ok protect yourself, he said ‘no, no’, he is not going to use any condom so he did it like that, raw”, she recounted in the first instance.

Interestingly, Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and human right institutions that have been making a lot of noise about women’s rights, as well as the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service, have remained silent on the issue.

John Mahama Spills The Beans

Posted: Daily Guide |Wednesday, 31 March 2010

By Charles Takyi-Boadu
VICE PRESIDENT John Dramani Mahama has to some extent explained why his government has been economical in its spending pattern.

He attributes the steep cuts in government expenditure to efforts to narrow the country’s deficit, which has been pursued since the year 2009.

Speaking in Accra at an international conference organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) under the theme ‘The impact of the global financial crisis on West African states: leveraging public-private dialogue for development’, the Vice President noted that the cut in government spending has been the result of the global economic crisis, which has limited government’s borrowing options.

Whereas stimulus packages were pursued in other countries, Mr. Mahama indicated that the option was not available to Ghana since, according to him, major sources of external finance such as Official Development Assistance (ODA), revenue from export and import duties were affected by the crisis, thereby constraining growth through its effects on government spending.

In the case of Ghana, the Vice President indicated that “These effects were so severe that in 2009 Ghana had little option but to turn to the IMF and the World Bank for financial support to close the huge resource gap in government finances and to address the balance of payment weakness”.

This, according to him, was the reason behind the government’s decision to outline a number of strategies to mitigate the effect of the crisis on the poor and restore stability to the economy, including providing deprived basic school pupils with uniforms.

Aside that, he noted that government was also compelled by prevailing circumstance to also rationalize its expenditure by cutting down on wasteful expenses, including those on foreign travel, workshops and conferences.

Furthermore, he said it informed its decision to consolidate 27 ministries into 24 in order to rationalize its expenditure, and reduce the number of ministers from 87 to 72.

The decision to increase capitation grant from GH¢3.00 to GH¢4.50 (50%), provide free exercise books to pupils in all basic schools and the review of petroleum taxes, with the aim of reducing domestic petroleum prices, were all said to have been part of measures to cushion Ghanaians.

Meanwhile, provisional estimates from the Ghana Statistical Service put the country’s real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in the year 2009 at 4.7 per cent, whilst the Central Bank, the Bank of Ghana, projects a real GDP growth rate of above 6 per cent for 2010.

Vice President John Mahama thus believes that projected increased total revenue grants for the 2010 fiscal year will not only depend on tax policy and the revenue administration system, but on the overall economic activity.

For this reason, he said, “Our revenue targets could be affected if there is a downturn in economic activity as a result of the global financial crisis”.

Under the current circumstance, Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Seth Tekper said Ghana, and for that matter the government, is planning to pass a Petroleum Revenue Resource Management Law to regulate and channel the inflow of revenues into specific expenditures.
Whilst appreciating the fact that there appears to be increases in global demand and output, translating into increased exports of primary commodities for many developing countries, he stressed the need for countries within the West African sub-region to adopt what he described as a counter-cyclical and contingency measure to avoid being swept off again should another crisis erupt.