Press Conference Held By The Central Regional Branch Of The New Patriotic Party ON 21ST FEBRUARY, 2011 AT REGIONAL PARTY OFFICE

PRESIDENT ATTA MILLS’ THIRD STATE OF THE NATION ADDRESS; THE INNUENDOS AND THE INSINUATIONS


Good morning our dear friends from the media. We have invited you here this morning to engage with you on certain pertinent matters which relate to our governance system and also go to the core of the peace, tranquility and security of our nation.
Under the directive principles of state policy as contained in chapter six article 34(2) of the 1992 constitution, the president of the republic is required to report to parliament at least once a year all the steps taken to ensure the realization of the policy objectives contained in chapter six of the 1992 constitution and in particular the realization of basic human rights, a healthy economy, the right to work, the right to good health care and the right to education.
The party in the region on the account of this constitutional requirement constrained itself to believe and also extended the benefit of doubt to the President on the occasion of his appearance in the august house of Parliament to animate this constitutional injunction. Sad to say, this was not to be. On that unique auspicious platform which many past, sitting and future presidents would employ to galvanize their peoples and nations behind them for a healthy nation building, President Atta Mills chose to engage in the NDC characteristic platform sloganeering and an absolutely non-beneficial, unpresidential enterprise of insinuations, innuendos and aspersions on perceived political opponents and in the process unashamedly issued veiled threats.
The party in the region is doubting whether President Mills was the same candidate Mills who in January 2008 called for Kenya into Ghana if he did not see the 2008 general elections as free, fair and transparent. When he wished Kenya for Ghana, did he for any moment pause to reflect that Ghana was going to die?
Is this President Mills who now realizes that whether you come from the south, west, east or north you are a Ghanaian, the same candidate Mills who stood in Mamford, a coastal town in the Gomoa West district in the Central Region to declare that the then President, John Agyekum Kufuor was not from the coast, an asante, who did not care a hoot about the fishing industry, the main occupation of the people and had thus sold off all the cold stores along the coast and instead established cold stores in his hometown Kumasi?
The party in the region wishes to know when President Mills became detribalised as to afford him the moral high ground to pontificate and sermonize to Ghanaians.
Was it not this Saint, His holiness President Atta Mills who stood in the Volta Region in the heat of the 2008 campaign and asked the people in that region what the Kufuor government had done for them? And that the only thing the Kufuor government had done was to jail their kith and kin?
If the President has a good control over his memory, then the NPP in Central region would humbly wish to ask him how he could so soon forget his campaign mantra ‘’Adze wo fie a oye’’ in the Central Region in the 2008 general elections?
In this obvious, palpably hypocritical attitude of the president, the only object is this long running effort of the NDC and its apologists to foist on the psyche of Ghanaians this false, deceitful humble, God-fearing, holier-than-thou image of the president, which they happily pat themselves on the back that it is bait that Ghanaians have swallowed. If this was not it, then the party in the region cannot see how the filthy and the stinking would turn round to tutor us on how to have our bath.
Security and red alert
Our friends from the media, hear the President: ‘Madam Speaker, as commander-in-chief of the Ghana Armed Forces, and having sworn to protect the integrity of Mother Ghana, I have put the security agencies on red alert and they are under strict instructions to deal decisively within the ambit of the law with anybody or group of persons who will attempt to disturb the peace and stability of this dear nation of ours’.
The position of the party in the region is that such a statement could only come from a president who is psychologically unstable and insecure and does not see himself as deserving of the position he occupies but his opponent. Hence to make up for this deficit, he must remind his opponent of this extra arsenal at his disposal. Otherwise it is mind boggling that a president will decide to place a country’s whole security machinery on red alert because of a legitimate advice professed by his political opponent to his party following. The president in this salvo completely misses the point and displays a crass misappreciation of the quintessential elements of the appropriate way forward.
However the party in the region wishes to refer him to his statement, which may have been made without the ‘impact’ of the true import reflecting on him, that political stability is the gift, but we may say the product of political discipline by all actors.
Mr. President, to secure this country therefore does not lie in issuing threats but taming your ever wayward, ever destructive, ever violent, ever monstrous party footsoldiers who extended their boundless, nation-wrecking activities into the precincts of parliament house when you were also so much engaged in these innuendo theatricals. The political discipline would also require that the security agencies not being placed on red alert frivolously or arbitrarily but rising up to the occasion whether it is a national security operative who is shooting indiscriminately at Ghanaians in a bye-election at Chereponi, whether it is the NDC national women’s organizer who instructs her driver to drive through an innocuous crowd of Ghanaians and in the process maiming and injuring them, whether it is a jihadist deputy minister unleashing party footsoldiers to go on shooting spree or it is Ghanaians who are being butchered by marauding NDC supporters in agbogbloshie in broad day light in front of a police post.
Dear friends, a state of the nation address which should trigger the deployment of minds to discuss matters of development and bread and butter rather ends up this way because the president called for it.
The party in the region wishes to offer this magnanimous piece of advice to the President that he has the last opportunity in 2012, after which he joins the ranks of former presidents Rawlings and Kufuor, to prove his mettle which will urge us to discuss the fast declining fishing industry which grew 10% in 2008 but -2% in 2009 and further down in 2010, the CEDECOM which was to be tooled to create jobs for the youth in Central Region and which never saw the light of day and has now been subsumed in a so called western corridor development authority, the deceptive parading of the Chinese ambassador in Cape Coast to create the impression to the people of Cape Coast that they were in to construct the Kufuor-initiated new kotokoraba market and Cape Coast stadium and the overnight transformation of the NDC regional executives into contractors who unfortunately have abandoned projects into which the tax payers monies have been sunk in some senior high schools in the region.
The party at this stage wishes to assure Nana Addo that he has our full unflinching, unwavered, unalloyed support in our collective quest and which invariably is the loud cry of the teeming majority of Ghanaians to recapture political power from the hands of this incompetent, team B, non-performing, greedy bastards, mediocre dzi wo fie asem government and whether threat or no threat ALL DIE BE DIE. Thank you for your attention our dear friends.

Signed
Kwamena Duncan
(Regional Secretary)
Tel: 0244659520