Opinions of Sunday, 15 March 2020

Columnist: NPP UK Communications Directorate

Cassiel Ato Forson exposed in London

Ato Forson Ato Forson

Cassiel Ato Forson has been heavily exposed in London during a radio interview for endorsing HE Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as a hard-working President who deserve more terms.

The interview was granted on the 13th of March 2020 on GM Radio in London with Mr David Prah, the Eastern Regional Communications Director of the ruling NPP and the former PRO of the National Service Secretariat.

According to Mr Prah, many of his NDC friends such as Opare Addo, Kwaku Boahene, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Chief Biney and other NDC communicators regularly endorse the good policies of HE Nana Addo such as the free SHS, to which many of their family members have taken full advantage of, and other fantastic work done by HE Nana Addo and his ruling NPP government, but only in private and not in public.

One such person is Mr Cassiel Ato Forson, MP, and a former deputy finance minister during former John Mahama’s NDC administration.

Mr Forson who has been a critic of the current administration especially when it comes to the content of the NPP budgets, and who has been quoted as telling the NPP administration to apologise to Ghanaians.

He had said "instead of apologizing to Ghanaians you are deceiving them that you have fulfilled all your promises. we all know that is not true...when you are in opposition and you are making promises, you should know those you can fulfil and the ones you cannot but if you don't do that you end up making empty promises’’ [Ghanaweb 18/11/2019].

What many Ghanaian will be interested in is for Mr Ato Forson to point out which campaign promise has not been met and hence his justification of calling the NPP government a liar.

Despite all these criticisms in public, in private, however, Mr Ato Forson is a huge admirer of the Nana Addo led government. He has endorsed HE Nana Addo and thanked him for his good policies for Ghana. This was confirmed by Mr Prah who had met Mr Forson at Aqua Safari some time ago in Ghana, where this endorsement was made.

When calls were made to Mr Cassiel Ato Forson to clarify his position, he first denied that he knows Mr Prah, not that listeners were expecting him to admit he knew Mr Prah anyway, he then accused Mr Prah of being an identity thief, an accusation that baffled many listeners, after all, Mr Prah did not present himself as Mr Ato Forson.

Mr Cassiel Ato Forson then threatened to send Mr Prah to court (in an angry tone and a wavering voice, suggesting some truth in what Mr Prah had said) as his behaviour is dangerous and could get people into trouble.

While there is nothing wrong with having different political views, leaders and politicians must learn to admit when good policies and programmes are rolled out in Ghana regardless of the ruling party.

On this occasion, we know that many Ghanaians have endorsed HE Nana Addo due to his flagship pro-poor policies such as free SHS, construction of massive roads, digitising the economy, formalising the economy, planting for food and jobs, one village one dam, one constituency one ambulance, one district one factory among others in an attempt to increase the pace of socio-economic transformation in Ghana.

On NDCs recent press conference on the one village one dam, Mr Prah suggested to Sammy Gyamfi and his crew to conduct their press conference next time in the middle of one of the fully constructed dams full of freshwater and not in an uncompleted one.