President’s address good, pleasing - CPP, PNC
Two Nkrumaist political parties have described President Mahama’s State of the Nation Address as a fair representation of the state of the nation but differed in their reactions to the decision by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to boycott the address.
They were particularly enthused that the President
acknowledged the challenges facing the country and enumerated to the strategies
he and his government had initiated to address those problems, especially the
water, electricity, among other challenges.
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Speaking to the Daily Graphic after President Mahama had
delivered the State of the Nation Address, Mr Ivor Greenstreet, the General
Secretary of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), said the President’s address
was “very good”, touched most sensitive areas of the country and offered a
glimmer of hope to the people.
He shared the President’s claim that the country’s election
managers must be commended and continuously resourced to allow them to
constantly conduct free and fair elections.
He appealed to Ghanaians to give meaning to the President’s
call for unity to ensure that together as a nation all hands were put on deck
for the development of the country.
Mr Greenstreet welcomed the President’s commitment to the
provision of affordable housing to ease the burden on the ordinary Ghanaian who
had to toil and pool resources to pay landlords who had taken undue advantage
of the housing situation to charge exorbitant rent advances.
Regarding the NPP’s boycott of the address, he said as the
CPP had always articulated, it was within the NPP’s right to embark on that
move.
Mr Bernard Mornah, the General Secretary of the People’s
National Convention (PNC), commended the President for touching on almost all
the sensitive areas of Ghanaian life,
especially education, health, agriculture, the media and the economy, but was
not pleased that concrete measures were not put out on how to grow the
industrial sector which would employ the teeming youth.
He noted that the President’s pledge to make education
affordable to allow even “the guinea fowl farmer’s daughter to have access to tertiary
education” was welcome news and urged the President to follow up on that.
He noted that the President’s point on reforms in the mining
sector was pleasing because it would prevent the situation where mining
companies made huge profits in the midst of excruciating poverty among the
indigenous people who had to bear the brunt of environmental pollution
associated with mining activities.
Mr Mornah indicated that the point about the
operationalisation of the Media Development Fund, the move to expedite action
on the Freedom of Information Bill and the Broadcasting Bill were all good
initiatives.
Story by Donald Ato Dapatem
