Konadu Leads Mills

Posted: Daily Guide |Monday, 31 January 201
www.dailyguideghana.com

By Charles Takyi-Boadu
Former First Lady and Vice Chairperson of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings leads the sitting President John Evans Atta Mills in the NDC 2012 flagbearership race by 10 percentage points, according to an online poll conducted by Peace FM, as the National Executive Committee of the party is set to hold a crucial meeting in what insiders say would define the direction of the party.

The online survey has currently registered 6,573 respondents. It began on the 2nd of January 2011 and is still on going.

But with 39.66%, Nana Konadu may still fall short of the desirable 'one touch', which will require 50%+ of the NDC party delegates' votes at this year’s national congress.

The online poll also appears to confirm the widely-held view of pundits that the contest is at most a three-man race, with Ekwow Spio-Garbrah scoring a decent 12.11%.

According to the poll, 2,607 respondents, representing 39.66 percent, would cast their ballot for the former first lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, while 1,941, representing 29.53%, would vote for her rival, President John Evans Atta Mills.

Dr. Ekow Spio-Garbrah, a National NDC Vice Chairman who in recent times has been very critical of the performance of the Mills-led NDC administration, obtained 791 votes, with the sitting Vice President, John Dramani Mahama, obtaining 583 votes, representing 8.87% of votes cast so far.

The Peace FM website posed the question: “Which Of These Personalities Would You Prefer Leads the NDC In 2012?”

It is however unclear whether any or some of the respondents are the delegates who have the franchise to vote in such an internal party election.

Sources close to the national headquarters of the party told DAILY GUIDE the meeting, which is scheduled to take place on Wednesday February 2, 2011, would set a date for the NDC’s flagbearership contest.

The NEC meeting will expectedly be attended by all key and influential members of the party including its founder, Former President Rawlings, and leader, President Mills. It is also expected to decide on how much candidates will pay as filing fee for the flagbearership and its parliamentary primaries.

Even as the party goes into this meeting, NDC activists including the likes of Mohammed Abdulai Mubarak and SaCut Amenga Etego, with known links to the Rawlingses, have expressed doubts about incumbent President Mills’ ability to deliver victory for the party in 2012 if he were to run again.

Ras Mubarak, who spoke to DAILY GUIDE, argued that by 2012, Mills would have been 12 years as leader of the NDC and “it is time (for him) to leave the stage.

“Are we willing to take that road where in the future someone could also want to be leader of the party for 16years?” he asked rhetorically.

“I feel President Mills no longer has a strong enough political base in the NDC to justify his leading us into another contest. There is a disappearance of support for him and I trust he would do the right thing by not contesting.

The interest of the nation, then of the party, must always come before any other considerations. Therefore if he contests, it will be a dangerously destabilizing precedent for the future,” he noted.

For some time now, there have been calls within the ruling party for the former First Lady, Nana Konadu, to challenge President Mills, who has been described as failing to rise to the occasion.

“Mills can only take us back to opposition but he can’t kill the ideals of NDC,” were the comments of Ras, an avowed apostle of Mr. Rawlings.

To those who argue that Rawlings has led the country before and that his wife should not contest to become the party’s flagbearer, Ras said, "Rawlings is not on the ballot and it would be unfair and self-defeating for her opponents to blame her for someone else’s mistakes even if that person were her husband.”

He stressed that the argument which was invoked by Ben Ephson of the ‘Dispatch’ newspaper about Mrs. Rawlings was wrong, saying, “Yes Rawlings had ruled the nation before and it doesn’t disqualify his wife from running.”

Aside that, Ras Mubarak said, Mr. Ephson has not done any polling on Mrs. Rawlings and that if he has, “he should please let the public know the polls, timing and sample size and precise questions asked, then we can do a proper analysis.”

Furthermore, he said, “If a pollster doing a private poll is not willing to release information to allow people to make up their minds about the validity of the research, people should treat it or any commentary by Mr. Ben Ephson with caution.”

Ras Mubarak thus urged Mrs. Rawlings to heed the calls for her to run for the flagbearership position.

Nana Konadu’s T-shirts are already in circulation.

Though the former First Lady has not officially stated her intentions to contest the flagbearership position of the NDC, it is increasingly becoming clear that she is hell-bent on contesting incumbent President Mills who maybe seeking a second term for the position, barring any hitches.

The front of the t-shirt shows an all-smiling Nana Konadu in a sparkling gold ear-ring and necklace, spotting a neatly-woven Kente cloth in dark shades, with the bold inscription “I BELIEVE IN NANA KONADU.”

Behind it, is the famous insignia of the ruling party, the umbrella, with the inscription, “CHANGE REAL CHANGE!” in virtual ridicule of the type of change that President Mills has been administering.

Like Nigeria’s President, Goodluck Jonathan, Konadu’s boys, led by SaCut, have resorted to the use of the social networking platform, ‘Facebook’ to champion the cause of the former First Lady with samples of these t-shirts posted on their walls.

By Charles Takyi-Boadu

Pratt Raps Mills

Posted Daily Guide |Friday, 28 January 2011
www.dailyguideghana.com

By Charles Takyi-Boadu
One of the men who have often vouched for the credibility of President John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills seems to be gradually losing confidence in the Head of government.

Speaking at a press conference in Accra yesterday, Kwesi Pratt Jnr, Managing Editor of Insight newspaper and a close associate of the president said, “Indeed if I ever heard that he (President Mills) has personally been corrupt, I will be completely shocked and yet this is the report the Auditor-General has written about 2009; a period in which he was President of the Republic.”

Mr. Pratt, who claimed to have known the President for well over 30years and could therefore vouch for his sincerity and personal commitment, wondered why corruption and its related incidents were so widespread in the Mills administration.

He noted that “this is the report of the Auditor General under his reign. It makes the point very clear.”

The event was organized by the once vociferous pressure group, Committee for Joint Action (CJA) which prided itself on being the voice of the ordinary Ghanaian on the street until Mills and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration assumed the reins of government.

Kwesi Pratt and his colleagues in the CJA, including Kwasi Adu, sought to expose what they termed as the maladministration and the loss of financial resources in some government agencies based on the findings of the Auditor General’s report on the public accounts of the country for the year 2009.

The said report contains payroll overpayment which amounted to a whopping GH¢2.49billion, constituting 90.3% of irregularities in the public sector.

Out of this amount, GH¢2,484,934,415 occurred mainly as a result of payroll irregularities of Ghana’s foreign missions (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) where there was failure to promptly delete the names of staff who no longer worked with those embassies.

Within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, irregularities also led to a total loss of GH¢11,993,035.

The Ministry was thus said to have no clear policy guidelines to regulate the payment of allowances to officials working with Ministers of the Ministry. The Ministry justified this by indicating that the officials involved worked overtime and some during weekends, hence they were granted standard monthly allowances pegged at the dollar rate, and which amounted to more than their gross monthly salaries.

At the Ministry of Health, the audit uncovered a huge loss of GH¢6,121,298, including the detection of non-adherence to financial rules which resulted in misappropriation of funds amounting to GH¢140,683 by hospital officials. Failure to obtain expenditure supporting documents to substantiate payments amounted to GH¢282,958.

The Director of the National Centre for Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine at Korle Bu was for instance detected to have awarded a contract worth GH¢10,000 to a private auditing firm without the express consent and approval of the Auditor General.

Irregularities at the Ministry of Interior also amounted to GH¢9,586,816 including cash irregularities, acts of malfeasance such as revenue misappropriation, police exhibits released without authenticating documents, un-acquitted vouchers and un-receipted transfers.

In view of these and many other staggering revelations, Mr. Pratt could not but note, “That clearly should emphasise the point that personal sincerity, personal commitment and so on is not sufficient and that something else needs to happen.”

Ghanaians Are Dying

Posted: Wednesday, December 15, 2010. Daily Guide
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
The Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG) doubts whether existing conditions in the country supports President Mills and his National Democratic Congress (NDC)’s promise of a ‘Better Ghana’, two years after they assumed the reins of government.

AFAG believes the NDC government has failed to fulfill several promises it made to Ghanaians which influenced them to vote for the party during the 2008 general elections.

At a press conference in Accra yesterday, chaired by the former Member of Parliament for Lower West Akyem, James Apeatu Ankrah, spokesman for the group Steve Amoah aka Sticker challenged government to show a sense of commitment towards achieving those promises since Ghanaians were reeling under the shadows of economic hardship.

He recalled how President Mills and the NDC promised to neither increase nor introduce new taxes.

However, when the party assumed the reins of governance and in its 2011 budget statement, the government introduced a number of these taxes, AFAG said.

This, according to AFAG, “Clearly demonstrates to the nation, the heartless and wicked nature of the NDC government.”

AFAG believes that “the NDC government has reneged on its promises to deliver the so called Better Ghana Agenda”, insisting that “the NDC has worsened the quality of life of the average Ghanaian.”

Whilst noting that it was not against tax adjustment, AFAG said increases in taxes should be done in a way that would not increase the hardship of Ghanaians but boost private business growth and make them competitive.

Under the current economic conditions and business climate, they believed tax increases could hardly be a positive job creation strategy.

“Indeed, the wide range of taxes and tax increases levied on the private sector appears to be deliberate,” said Steve Amoah.

This, he said, was because the Head of Policy and Monitoring at the seat of Government (the Castle), Dr Tony Aidoo, recently described the private sector as a parasitic sector that deserved to be taxed for development.

AFAG stated, “This demonstrates that the NDC is not committed to the private sector”, adding, “It is important that the government recognizes that the market women, taxi and trotro drivers, shoeshine boys, cocoa and other farmers, carpenters, chop bar owners, small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs), entrepreneurs, etc. are at the heart of the private sector.”

“Undoubtedly, the government is taxing the private sector to death. This would kill the entrepreneurial spirit of the private sector and bring the sector to its knees. It seems the government does not care. It has lost touch with reality as it continues on this tax epidemic,” it said.

The group stated that “tax stamps for the informal sector including Makola women, kiosks owners, Kejetia market women would make the poor Ghanaian poorer.”

Steve Amoah noted that the 300% increase in debt recovery levy had given rise to controversy as to whether the President was still committed to reducing fuel drastically, with the fear that this would have resultant increase in the price of petroleum products which the President promised to reduce drastically.

It could also not fathom why a whopping 20% tax had been placed on plastic products, which is targeted at companies using plastics such as those in the food, drinks, pharmaceutical and sachet water industries.

They noted that these areas of the economy, particularly the sachet water bus sector, employed mostly the ordinary Ghanaian, stressing that it was unacceptable and a clear aberration from the NDC’s mantra of not introducing new taxes.

AFAG has asked government to come out with a strategic solution to the challenges associated with the plastic or rubber waste management which could help employ more people in the society.

The leadership of AFAG could also not comprehend why talk tax had now been extended to all data and internet service companies since it would make internet browsing more expensive.

Steve Amoah said, “It is disingenuous or absurd for any government to claim that this policy would create jobs,” since “This tax would make internet browsing more expensive at a time the industry is struggling to survive.”

He said, “The internet service providers (ISPs) are finding it difficult to stay afloat and the last thing they need is another tax”, asking rhetorically, “Is the President Mills NDC government really aware of what is happening to the ISPs.”

“These taxation policies of this government are clearly dysfunctional to the aggregate performance of the private sector which plays key roles in economic growth and job creation in Ghana,” it stated.