Press Statement By The Central Regional Scretariat Of The NPP ON VAIN PROMISES TO BUILD THE CAPE COAST STADIUM AND THE KOTOKURABA MARKET BY PRESIDENT JOHN MAHAMA (THE CARETAKER/’SPARE TYRE’)
19/08/2012
PRESIDENT JOHN MAHAMA-THE USUAL UNREPENTANT DISHONEST SELF
On Friday, August 10, 2012 at the funeral service of the late President John Evans Atta Mills at the Independence square, President John Mahama read a tribute to the memory of the late President John Evans Atta Mills. Part of the tribute read: President Mills was the embodiment of the very things which had been missing in our politics for a long time; civility, humility, integrity and honesty.
Our consideration was that President John Mahama had become born-gain by these supposed attributes of the late Prof. Atta Mills and that he had shed off his old dishonest self part of which we wish to recall to better situate this statement.
John Mahama in 2008 in seeking for power told Ghanaians that it amounted to mediocrity if one government built twenty three classroom blocks and another came in to build twenty eight classroom blocks and sought to compare the two feats. Yet in launching the NDC Better Ghana agenda green book, he said we will compare how many development projects they (NPP) undertook and how many we (NDC) have undertaken.
Again in 2008 he said the solution to security challenges of our country was not increased police numbers but how efficient and properly tooled the police were. For very strange reasons which still remain inexplicable a police recruiting exercise which was ongoing was cancelled when Mills-Mahama led NDC administration assumed the reins of government. As Chairman of the Police Council however recruitments into the police have gone on obviously leading to increased police numbers.
In the same 2008, as part of his inordinate ambition to become the Vice President and possibly to benefit through the back door the way he has, he stood in the Western Region and promised the Chiefs and the good people of the Western Region that if they came into office they were going to reserve ten percent (10%) of the oil proceeds to develop the Western Region only to deny it when he was confronted with his own promise after coming into office. This is just a little recall but it leaves no average objective mind in doubt that the person in issue is a very dishonest, untrustworthy man.
In fante, we have a saying which goes; apow a, pow wo na. To wit, if you have made it in life, then take good care of your mother. Is it not mind boggling that a vice president cuts a sod for the construction of a regional hospital for the good people of the Upper West region as far back as July, 2010 and to date not a single brick has been laid yet the same man just three weeks after the demise of a president who engaged in a very unfortunate tribal-based politics and could not fulfill the so called dear-to-the-heart promises to his people in three and half solid years comes to promise them that he will get these projects done in less than five months. What was John Mahama’s effort in getting these projects underway as the chairman of the economic management team which prepared the budgets for 2009 to 2012 and consecutively captured these projects?
At the Victoria Park in Cape Coast on Friday, August 17, 2012, the caretaker President John Mahama, who for almost one month after assuming office is not so much seized with the need to roll out policies and programmes which will alleviate the hardships the Ghanaian people find themselves in and now doing a ten regional ‘Thank you’ tour after a similar vote of thanks national broadcast, announced to the people of Cape Coast the financial component and design of the Cape Coast stadium and the Kotokuraba market are ready on his table and awaiting his signature for the projects to commence.
He revealed that the Chinese government will however build the Cape Coast stadium in memory of the late President John Evans Atta Mills free of charge. The question is when did this transaction take place within the period of mourning? What will motivate the Chinese government to, in a matter of three weeks, send in drawings and approve of financing for the construction of the Cape Coast stadium free of charge when in three and half years they failed to give us a loan for its construction?
The questions are imminent because in January, 2011, the late President in his interaction with editors in the Castle announced that the Chinese Ambassador to Ghana, as he spoke, was in Cape Coast to do project assessment alongside his 2011 action year declaration which failed to achieve same.
Again, on myjoyonline in a report filed by Richard Nii Abbey on July 26, 2012, Hon Haruna Iddrisu, the Communications Minister is quoted as saying that the late President tasked him together with a senior minister of state (whose identity he would not want to disclose in order not to break his oath of Secrecy in Office) to see to it that the two projects are completed on schedule.
This reveals that the president knew he was going to die and did not find the then vice president honest and trustworthy enough to bequeath him this task.
We would not want to list the several pronouncements and contradictions relating to these projects which have come from NDC party and government functionaries including Koku Anyidoho(without portfolio), Honourables Muntaka, Rashid Pelpuo, Barton Odro(Woyomee), Ama Benyiwa Doe, Allotey Jacobs, Egyir Aikins et al.
The clear unequivocal message the NPP in the Central region and for that matter the majority of the good people of the Central region wish to convey to the president, John Mahama, is that deceitful, dishonest PR political gamesmanship will not change his destiny of a ‘spare tyre’ waiting to be changed with a replacement of Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP on December 7, 2012 to move Ghana forward.
Signed
Kwamena Duncan
(Regional Secretary)
Tel: 0244659520, 0208845230