President Nana Akufo-Addo has told his predecessor John Mahama that the latter’s oft-declared love for the masses is only demagogic and urged the governing New Patriotic Party to ensure his government gets re-elected to save Ghanaians the trouble of enduring another administration of the biggest opposition party, who described as people who only know how to draw Ghana back.

“We have a good story to tell, and we should go out to tell it. On every sector of our lives, we should show the difference between the NPP way of tackling problems, and the way our opponents do it”, Mr Akufo-Addo said in his acceptance speech on Saturday, 27 June 2020 after he was acclaimed as his party’s 2020 presidential candidate.

“We grow the economy, they shrink the economy; we create the properly regulated, enabling atmosphere for businesses to flourish, they allow chancers and speculators to lure citizens into putting their monies in dodgy enterprises”, he said, adding: “They bring our banks and financial services to near-collapse, and we have to clean up, shore up and restore confidence. They plunge us into DUMSOR, we keep the lights on. They look on clueless, as hundreds of thousands of Ghana’s children exit school at JHS, we bring Free SHS and Free TVET to prepare our children better to face life”.

He noted: “They resort to crude language when faced with difficult arguments, we raise the level of public discourse”.

Mr Akufo-Addo said: “We owe it to ourselves and to Ghana to win the elections in December decisively, to make sure that we keep the economy on track, and not in the hands of people who will run it into the ground again”.

“Demagogic pronouncements about your so-called ‘love’ of the masses do not put food on the table; do not send the child to school; do not guarantee access to good healthcare; do not assure the pensioner the value of his pension. We do not believe in pitting the rich against the poor, or the poor against the rich. We believe in helping every Ghanaian to climb up the ladder of progress, and we have been consistent in this, not just in words, but in deeds”, he said.

The President continued: “We are told that those who were responsible for the worst economic performance of the last thirty (30) years have learnt their lessons, and seek another opportunity to correct their mistakes. Dare I ask – should the presidency be for experiments? Surely not! You, the Ghanaian people, deserve better, and you will get better on 7th December, with four (4) more years for Nana and the NPP to do more for you”.

“We have to win the election to see our many projects through to conclusion. We dare not leave the many factories coming up, under our 1D1F scheme, to be truncated. We dare not leave the Free SHS to be “reviewed”. We dare not leave our roads to go unattended again, only to become part of a ‘Green Book’ propaganda. We dare not jeopardise the digitisation schedule on which we have embarked”, he stressed.

“I urge you, therefore, my dear friends and colleagues, to go out with the confidence that comes from your government performing well, and running the affairs of the country competently. Tell our story to the Ghanaian people, and tell it often”.