STATESMAN OPINION: Be Ready To Vote On December 7 - All Parties Not The Same

Exactly 19 days from today, Friday, November 18, 2016, Ghanaians will be offered the opportunity to decide on which party and president manage the affairs of the country for the next 4years.

For the president, he will obviously not be doing the work alone, but with a group of people who share in his vision for the country and its people. And as the saying goes, “the buck stops with the leader.” This individual must be above reproach in greater part of his personal conduct, conviction and integrity.

Ghana, for the past 8years, has witnessed an era of monumental economic mismanagement and corruption, with its concomitant devastating effect on living conditions of ordinary Ghanaians. Social intervention policies inherited in the year 2009 that served as a cushion for those at the bottom of the economic ladder have all collapsed.

A country which produces oil in commercial quantities and has accumulated over $4billion in oil revenue over the period has virtually nothing to show for this windfall into our national kitty.

Blatant acts of corruption, which are clearly being perpetrated with the tacit approval of the president, have become the order of the day. Such wicked acts of looting the state coffers have become so pervasive that even the apex court of the land had the occasion to fittingly term it as “CREATE, LOOT and SHARE” enterprise.

Under the current Mahama administration, when huge sums of cash belonging to ordinary taxpayers are looted from state coffers by government officials, the remedy has always been sitting down with such corrupt characters and negotiating with them terms of paying back at their own convenience. Examples are the BUS BRANDING and WOYOME scandals.

Even the president, who is supposed to crack the whip, was himself deeply embroiled in a bribery scandal, involving a Ford Expedition vehicle.

As former A-G Martin Amidu has said, the monies the nation has lost through dubious deals, such as the GHC51 million Woyome loot, can only be retrieved with a change of government.

But rather sadly, there are still some members of the Ghanaian society who are still undecided as to which political party to vote for in the upcoming December 7 general elections. Such people often claim they have voted in the past but they think all the political parties are the same.

This notion cannot be correct because the nation did not witness the kind of corruption going on under the watch of President Mahama when the NPP was in power with President Kufuor in charge of affairs.

In the same way, Ghanaians can be rest assured that the next NPP government under the leadership of Nana Akufo-Addo will not allow corruption to be carried to the current ridiculous heights.

We at the Daily Statesman believe to govern a nation and to be able to steer it in the right direction, utilizing the resources for the benefit of the people, the leader must be someone with sincere desire to serve and of impeccable integrity, character-wise. This is where Nana Akufo-Addo rightly fits the bill.

Indeed, political parties are only vehicles people use in attaining political power. The actual work to improve the lives of the people through execution of cogent policy alternatives, which is the fulcrum around which governance revolves, is inextricably linked with the leader’s vision and character.

That is why the suffering masses must take advantage of the December 7 opportunity to make an emphatic statement to President Mahama that corruption and ineptitude are very dangerous to our collective survival, by rejecting him and bringing in the best alternative which is obviously the incorruptible Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

All Ghanaians must be putting themselves in readiness to vote on December 7 to effect the change all are yearning for, discarding the nation that all parties are the same when they are in power.