NPP claim to free SHS patent is false, fraudulent - Pratt
The Insight Managing Editor, Kwesi Pratt Jnr. says he is not only shocked and scandalised by the pettiness that has greeted President John Mahama’s announcement of progressively implementing the free SHS policy beginning 2015, he also finds claims that the New Patriotic Party introduced the concept as false, fraudulent and without basis.
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Firstly, the NPP should be jubilating that the very idea they may have introduced, if that were the case, has been found worthy of implementation by their political opponent, except if they want to tell the whole world they only deserve to implement good things.
Kwesi Pratt who was speaking on Radio Gold’s Alhaji and Alhaji at the weekend, said while education dominated issues in the 2012 elections, it is also a fact that the NPP’s ticket to power was free senior high school, “so that there came a time in the campaign when you ask any NPP activist any question, the answer was ‘Free S-H-S.’”
So key was education as part of the campaign that it was natural to become topical after the president’s State of the Nation address last week during which he announced the rollout.
“But my brothers, I am completely shocked and scandalised by the pettiness in these discussions, and to start with, I am not going to contest the claim that free education is something over which the New Patriotic Party has the patent. I am not going to contest that claim. I am not going to contest the claim that until the New Patriotic Party spoke in 2012, no Ghanaian had ever heard about free education, I’m not going to contest that claim. Free SHS, I assume for now, is the creation of the New Patriotic Party. Let us assume that that is the case.
“Now if that is the case and government comes and says that what you thought was good for Ghana, huh, I also agree it is good for Ghana and I’m going to implement it, why should the NPP be angry? Or are they telling us that they are the only people who should do good things? And that anybody who does any good thing apart from them, commits a crime, I cannot believe this. Indeed if I were in the NPP and I believe that I was the originator of the free Senior High School policy, I would be jubilating. They should have been jubilating that the government finally has come to accept that free Senior High School is something which is workable and is something which can benefit the people of Ghana and therefore is going to be implemented.
“But you see, that assumption, that Free Senior High School is something that the NPP introduced, is itself false. It’s false, it’s fraudulent, it has no basis.”
Pratt said he went to school for free, and even in the early seventies when he enrolled at the Ghana Institute of Journalism to study Journalism, he was virtually paid to go to school while tertiary education in those days was also free and others were even paid to take certain courses. Free education therefore cannot be anybody’s invention, certainly not after 1992, “and it is something that the Ghanaian people have enjoyed before and we can enjoy today and enjoy in the future.”
Pratt said he does not see why the NPP should be crying when it is clear, that from the 1992 Constitution, we are already late to implement the policy even at the tertiary level. Listen to Pratt: {mp3}Education_pratt_free_not_npp{/mp3}
“In any case, I think sometimes we have very short memories. I recall that way back in 2000, the 2000 elections, the Convention People’s Party manifesto, 2000 not 2012, promised free senior high school education, that is in 2000. So if somebody is going to claim the patent, should it be the New Patriotic Party who spoke about it in 2012? I can’t believe this. And then even in 2012, again we have very short memories. The first political party in 2012 to promise free senior high school was not the New Patriotic Party, it was Dr Nduom’s Progressive Peoples Party… It was about four months later that the New Patriotic Party hurriedly jumped onto that bandwagon, hurriedly jumped onto that bandwagon, so even if you were talking about 2012, the NPP is not the originator of that idea.”
Pratt maintained that even long before the NPP, three political parties including the People’s National Convention (PNC) had also promised free Senior High School education.
“But even before then have you forgotten Akua Donkor (Founder and leader of Ghana Freedom Party)? Have you forgotten Akua Donkor? Akua Donkor also said that she would make school free. She even went to the extent of saying that she would provide free cars to journalists and free everything and free healthcare and free everything and free and free! So as for promising free things, it did not start with the New Patriotic Party. Perhaps the New Patriotic Party may have learnt, and I say perhaps, a few lessons from Akua Donkor. So what is all this fuss about we started it first and so on?”
Kwesi Pratt said it is important that everyone recognises that the promise is a worthy one that the people of Ghana have been expecting. Besides, the fact that the NPP is claiming to be the originators, while the PNC, PPP and others have all promised it before and accept that it is good, means it is a good thing.
“Education is so important you cannot toy with it,” he said.
