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Election, choice between realism and opportunistic agenda — Veep
The 2016 election presents a choice to Ghanaians to make between a programme of realism of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and an opportunistic political agenda of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Vice-President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur has said.
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He stated that to make the right choice, the electorate had to look out for which of the two major political parties’ manifesto signalled seriousness and not just an insincere and opportunistic document.
Politics of realism
Mr Amissah-Arthur, who took his campaign to the Central Region last Monday, told students of the Cape Coast Polytechnic that the NDC manifesto was a logical document that had guided the vision of the party during its period in opposition unlike that of the NPP that was self-seeking.
Delivering a lecture to draw a parallel between the two political parties, the Vice-President stressed that it was necessary for the electorate to look out for which of the parties had the best human resource to prosecute its agenda in government.
He said the NDC manifesto was a visionary document with emphasis on job creation.
While stating that the NDC was a social democratic party with people-centred policies to the benefit of the entire citizenry, he said the NPP with its capitalist orientation only measured its performance by how well businesses performed in the hope that it would trickle down to the ordinary Ghanaian.
For him, the NDC manifesto represented practicality and had much more credible policies for the future development of Ghana than that of its opponents, adding that given the choices available to the people, President John Mahama was the best for Ghana in this year’s election.
Mr Amissah-Arthur, who is on a four-day campaign tour of the region, will meet with chiefs, opinion leaders, farmers, traders and also inaugurate a market at Assin Ngiresi.
Call to students
He told the students that any political party that sought to govern must have a coherent manifesto with realistic policies to signal the seriousness of the party to win power.
Mr Amissah-Arthur said per his calculation, the NPP’s manifesto proposal to either remove or reduce taxes would amount to revenue loss of about GH¢ 6.2 billion, while at the same time it would spend GH¢21 billion as new capital expenditure.
That expenditure, he said, would plunge the country into serious fiscal deficit of about 20 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product for which reason he urged Ghanaians to reject the NPP in the forthcoming polls.