Anger Against Mills� Government

The few businessmen and women, who dared risk their hard earned cash to finance the then cash-strapped NDC to win the 2008 Presidential and Parliamentary elections, are very angry with President Mills and his team. The source of the financiers� anger is what they say is the way both the President and his men have ignored them after riding on their backs to grab political power from the NPP. Scouts of The Daily Post newspaper who talked to a number of these financiers say what irks them even more is the fact that the President and his team are adding insult to injury by giving contracts to businessmen who are sympathetic towards the NPP. �Day and night, NDC big men pursued us for money to help them keep up the hot pace the NPP had set during the campaigns. We met them, sometime in the dead of the night and at very uncomfortable places to give them huge sums of money so they could campaign effectively and win the elections. �However, once in power, they have forgotten about us. They have turned their back on us. They do not care whether our businesses suffered because of the money we gave them or not,� one of the financiers in the software industry told the Daily Post newspapr. Another financier, who is in the energy sector said businessmen are not Father Christmas to be doling out their money for free. �If we were giving our monies out freely, we would not have had any left for the NDC to come for. We expect that having helped them to come to power, the last thing they can do is also help as through genuine and legal means to re-coup our money and if possible, make some more,� the financier said. One of the businessmen, in explaining how the NDC was rather giving contracts to the NPP big men used the award of passports contract to one Mr. Buckman of Buck Press by the Mills Administration. According to the financier, Mr. Buckman is a close Akufo-Addo ally who campaigned vigorously with Nana Akufo-Addo during the 2008 Presidential campaign. The financier said while he was Minister for Foreign Affairs, Akufo-Addo awarded a contract to Mr. Buckman to print 8,000 Ghanaian passports. When Hon. Akwasi Osei Adjei replaced Akufo-Addo as Minister for Foreign Affairs, he cancelled this contract. �Can you believe that when the NDC came to power, they re-awarded the contract to Mr. Buckman, the man who owns Buck Press, the printing firm which printed last year�s ballot papers with thumbprints already embossed on Akufo Addo�s column?� the angry financier said. Evidently, unless President Mills moved quickly to quench the raging anger of the financiers, the NDC would one day be treated like a disease by business men they approach for funds.