Following his recent lecture delivered last week Thursday, functionaries of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress government continue to subject Mahamudu Bawumia, Vice Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, to verbal attacks, with Vice President Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur now leading the charge, and seeking to force it on Ghanaians that the renowned economist and banker does not even understand basic issues in economics.
Interestingly, the Vice President and Chairman of the Economic Management Team, who appears to have now found his long-lost voice, has promised to teach Dr Bawumia some lessons in Economics. What a day Ghanaians are yearning for!
And the non-performing Veep Paa Kwesi Amissah-Authur and his colleagues are doing this as if they are convinced discerning Ghanaians, who President Mahama unfortunately believes have short memories, have forgotten about the fact that all major predictions Dr Bawumia made about the economy in his previous lectures had all come to pass.
On Tuesday, June 3, 2004, Ghana’s longest serving Finance Minister, Kwesi Botchwey, described as “brilliant”, a lecture that had been delivered by the NPP Running Mate a month before, that painted a gloomy picture of Ghana’s economy.
Though his detractors in the governing NDC and their collaborators in the media had described Dr Bawumia’s lecture as empty and a pack of lies, Prof Botchwey said the diagnosis made by the former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana on the country’s economy was apt.
“I am honoured following on the heels of Mahamudu and his brilliant lecture which stirred healthy debate on the woes of the cedi but generally on our national economy. Mahamudu is a young man whose professional credentials I particularly respect. So I offer no rebuttals to what he had to say. On the contrary, I do agree with much of what he said,” Prof Botchwey admitted when he took his turn at the Distinguished Speaker series organized by the Central University College.
A month before, on the same platform, Dr Bawumia had warned Vice President Amissah-Authur and his colleague managers of the economy that a bailout by the International Monetary Fund was inevitable if they failed to manage the economy well.
Dr Bawumia also predicted that new foreign exchange measures the Bank of Ghana had imposed on February 4, 2014 to address the sharp depreciation of the Cedi would not work.
All these predictions came to pass, earning him a high degree of credibility in the eyes of discerning Ghanaians and the international community. Yet, functionaries of the Mahama government say Ghanaians should not take Dr Bawumia serious when he speaks about the economy.
The fact cannot be gainsaid that the Mahama government has failed miserably in the management of the economy. And the reason is simple: they simply lack the ideas and skills to ensure prudent management of the economy. Ghanaians could have pardoned them for this; but instead of asking for help from Dr Bawumia and those who know better, they keep compounding the economic problems of the country, with its attendant hardship on the masses, by resorting to childish palliatives.
President Mahama wants Ghanaians to believe that the NDC government he leads has used the last eight years in laying a foundation for the economy, and so the government deserves a third term mandate to build on the foundation. How does the president expect the Ghanaian electorate to renew the mandate of a government that uses eight years working on a foundation that was stronger than what he and his government have given the nation at the moment?
The realities on the ground, which the Ghanaians masses can testify to, point to the fact that the last eight years have seen the NDC government reversing the nation’s economic foundation from concrete to straw. They also point to the fact that another term for this government will lead to a complete collapse of the economy.
Veep Paa Kwesi Amissah-Authur and his colleagues can continue to insult Dr Bawumia. But all that Ghanaians know is that Dr Bawumia said it all in May 2004; Prof Botchwey endorsed it in June 2014; and it came to pass that the Mahama government had to go to the IMF for a bail-out.