In the run up to the 2008 Presidential and Legislative elections, with most social commentators rooting for the then ruling New Patriotic Party on the basis that it was delivering on infrastructure, then Vice-Presidential Candidate of the opposition National Democratic Congress, John Dramani Mahama made a profound statement.
“If you vote for someone because of schools, hospitals and interchanges, you have a weak mind because it is government’s responsibility.”
Evidence abound that many Ghanaians bought into his assertion and sent the NPP tumbling out of Government House. The interesting development is that with him now in in power and with elections barely three weeks away, President Mahama is going to the polls on the basis of what he claims his government has done in infrastructure development.
When the President opened the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange, he unashamedly told Ghanaians that he has brought Dubai to Ghana and that Ghanaians should reward him with another term at the Jubilee House.
Not too long ago, the Head of State toured the country with all expenses paid for by the state, armed with what state officials and party apparatchiks fondly refer to as the Green Book, a pictorial presentation of spurious projects the government claims to have undertaken in cities, towns and villages.
The snag is that, most Ghanaians believe a number of those construction projects were inflated in terms of cost.
On Wednesday, the opposition New Patriotic Party called a news conference and alleged that the government had specialized in inflating the cost of projects and creaming off the excesses for party and private use.
In other words, President John Dramani Mahama and his administrators have enriched themselves at the expense of the poor Ghanaians, by initiating projects which cost bear no relationship with the reality on the ground.
And that the administration has resorted to borrowing for projects as a result of what state officials could pocket from such loans.
It has been a contentious issue since the then Vice-President was heavily involved in the purchase of aircrafts for use by the military from Brazil. The prices kept changing until the delivery period when this nation paid nearly two times the advertised rate.
We were told that late President John Evans Atta Mills set up a committee to investigate his deputy and that only his demise curtailed the enquiry.
Be it as it may, The Chronicle is unable to applaud an administration which has extended this nation’s indebtedness to external and internal creditors by over 1,500 percent.
In January 2009, when the NDC returned to the centre stage of this nation’s administration, Ghana owed GHc9.5 billion to creditors. Now, we owe nearly GHc150 billion.
Most of these strange deals are clothed in sole sourcing formula under which contracts are awarded without competitive bidding.
One naked example of how sole sourcing has raped this nation is the deal under which a Burkinabe contractor was paid an outrageous amount of US$ 650,000 to construct a wall around a state property in Ouagadougou.
The bribery allegation against the President was dismissed by officials of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice.
But the damage to the reputation of the man seeking a second term at the Jubilee House will follow President Mahama for a long time to come.
A political commentator once observed: “Truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other. No one, as far as I know, has ever counted truth among political virtues. Seen from the viewpoint of politics, truth has a despotic character and is, therefore, hated by tyrants and enjoys a rather precarious relationship with governments that rest on consent and abhor coercion,” our apologies to Hannah Arendt, an American political commentator.
The Mahama administration has stretched this assertion too far. Unfortunately in this country, truth has taken flight. In its place, cronyism and the crooked way of doing things have completely taken over.
If you want to know why this nation is deeply in debt, The Chronicle would answer you by pointing to sole sourcing means of awarding contracts with virtually half the contract sums ending in officials’ pockets.
Unfortunately, President Mahama would struggle to plead innocent to the charge of corrupting the system.
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