Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, (NPP) has been asked to remain realistic and avoid unattainable promises merely intended to hoodwink the people to vote for him in December.
The “John Mahama 2012 Group” a pro-National Democratic Congress (NDC) group in the Ketu-North District of the Volta Region, making the call, identified the NPP’s free Senior High School concept as a deceit of the people to gain votes and turn round to give excuses.
In a statement signed by its President, Mr Armstrong Mensah, the group said what the nation required now was a massive investment in educational infrastructure and other resources to improve access and quality.
“The Free SHS promise by the NPP is misplaced for now since classes cannot be held under trees,” the statement said.
Praising the NDC’s promise of establishing more pre-schools and teacher training colleges among others, the statement said “the educational policy of the NPP is to promote their so-called private sector individualistic goals of destroying the public schools to establish expensive private ones”.
“We plead with Ghanaians to vote NDC to strengthen the public school system, enhance accessibility first towards a progressive removal of fees as enshrined in the constitution,” the statement said.
The statement accused Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, Nana Akufo-Addo’s running mate of failing to educate Nana Akufo-Addo on the theory of scarcity of resources and scale of preference and choice, saying with the current resource constraints all the educational cost cannot be taken away at a go.
It said the choice of President Mahama to increase subsidy to reduce cost to parents was the best choice to vote for.
The group finally demanded an apology from the NPP to all the people of the Volta Region for its lies about NPP agents being manhandled during the 2008 elections and for describing the establishment of the University for Health and Allied Sciences in Ho as a waste of resources.