Most of the other remaining 20-odd projects initiated by the Akufo-Addo Administration are at various stages of implementation, while others are clearly fiscally seasonal economic measures that are liable to change because they are strictly subject to the labile or volatile vagaries of the market, such as the recent reduction of domestic and commercial electricity bills as well as the premium reduction of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). Others have to do with the establishment of the integrated bauxite and aluminum industry, which promises to significantly upgrade the economic level of Ghana as a hitherto primary commodity or raw material supplier to the highly industrialized countries of the West, for the most part.
The implementation of the mobile money transactional and banking system is no doubt seismic, as also the issuance of driver’s licenses and passport application and renewal online, which will drastically reduce the traditional room for bribery and corruption. In other words, there is fast emerging a cultural paradigmatic shift in Ghana that promises to exponentially expand the country’s economy and significantly streamline the conduct of business and living standards in general. On the establishment of the Office of the Independent Special Public Prosecutor, we have yet to see more in terms of promptly bringing lawbreakers and societal wrongdoers to account.
The Office of the Independent Special Public Prosecutor is, of course, one of the key areas of the quality-of-life revolution that then-Candidate Akufo-Addo promised to effect in the leadup to the 2016 Presidential Election. And while it may not be palpably felt, as it is bound to be gradually felt, nevertheless, the NPP’s Communication Team Members ought to be able to effectively explain to the general public precisely why even amidst the seeming economic chaos and microeconomic hardship, on the whole, the Akufo-Addo Administration has been on track to reversing the precipitously declining economy which the present government inherited from the Mahama regime. This must be done through the regular hosting of townhall meetings by NPP parliamentarians, assemblymen and women and the regional, municipal and district chief executives. The people need to be regularly updated in the relevant areas of the country about the steady progress being made in the railroad transportation system.
The passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act is definitely a step in the right direction, but it surely must be pragmatized and made more credible by being afforded sharp teeth to bite. What with the double-salary drawing Mahama cabinet appointees who have yet to face the sacred music of justice? In the banking area, the knowledge of first-rate experts among the vanguard ranks of the NPP must be studiously engaged in order to effectively explain to the public the criminally complicit and abetment role played by the Woyome-Coddling regime operatives of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress in the creation of such horrid mess, and especially how money laundering by some key operatives of the previous regime may have directly contributed to the fast-declining economy inherited by Nana Akufo-Addo. This is a highly technical area the requires simplification in language that any adult Ghanaian citizen with a sixth-grade education can fully appreciate.
The implementation of social intervention programs for the disabled and destitute also needs to be underscored. Ironically, this progressive policy initiative is what significantly differentiates the faux-social democrats of the National Democratic Congress from the social welfare-oriented leadership of the ruling New Patriotic Party, who clearly need at least as much time as it took the Rawlings-fangled erstwhile Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) junta and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to totally wreck to repair. Indeed, this may be precisely why Mr. John Boadu, the General-Secretary of the New Patriotic Party, recently had occasion to poignantly and wisely observe that looking at the abysmal state of the national economy and the generally abjectly poor quality of living standards presided over and handed over to the Akufo-Addo Administration by the grossly incompetent and fiscally irresponsible Mahama regime’s operatives, it may very well take a hardworking and progressive government like the New Patriotic Party at least 40 years to bring Ghana to the level and socioeconomic status where it ought to be.
Indeed, the question of whether the New Patriotic Party gets to stay in power considerably long enough to be able to modernize and effectively turn the country’s economy and living standards around, pretty much depends on how the New Patriotic Party’s Communication Team is able to fiercely and effectively fight off the propaganda gimmickry and political sophistry and bluster of their counterparts of the main opposition National Democratic Congress. Twenty-Nineteen is the year in which Ghanaians need to be sobered up and critically made aware of the fact that the major stumbling block standing between them and unfettered democratic development is the propagandistic mendacity practiced by the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress, who have absolutely nothing meaningful to offer our beloved country but empty rhetoric, opportunistic slogans and self-serving intimidation tactics. The NPP’s communicators have a bounden obligation to overmatch their NDC counterparts, if the long-term development and stability of the country are to be guaranteed.
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