The National Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Sammy Gyamfi, is demanding an unqualified apology from the government for the “excruciating hardships they continue to impose on the Ghanaian people”.
According to the NDC executive, despite the current government being the most-resourced in the history of the Fourth Republic, it has not been able to sustain the economy but rather gone to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout.
He insists that if the NDC, led in 2015 by John Dramani Mahama, had the same resources like the New Patriotic Party (NPP), they would not have gone to the IMF.
“The attempt by NPP communicators to equalize and rationalize the decision of the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government to go for an IMF bailout is pathetic and ridiculous to say the least,” he wrote on Facebook on Saturday, July 2.
He said the current administration had access to more oil revenue, tax revenue and borrowed funds than any other government in the current Republic.
“In all, they have had access to over GH¢500 billion in total revenue as compared to the about GH¢200 billion that accrued to the NDC/Mahama government.”
For him, he said the decision announced to seek an IMF bailout is because the government “wasted all the unprecedented revenues that have accrued to them on consumption, profligacy and corruption”.
“Today, posterity has exposed their hypocrisy, deceitfulness, recklessness and emptiness.
“The least they can do under the circumstances is to bury their arrogance, swallow their pride, accept responsibility for the mess they have created, accept that they have been useless in the manner they have mismanaged the economy and apologize for the excruciating hardships they continue to impose on the Ghanaian people.”
He said the government should eat humble pie and to continue defending the state of the economy “will only expand the bottomless pit they have plunged themselves into”.
“Leadership that accepts responsibility and shows sensitivity to the plight of the people is what Ghanaians yearn for in a time like this and not the puffed up arrogance and intransigence this government continues to display.”
The private legal practitioner had predicted the government proceeding to the IMF but said that will be beside the point if the Electronic Transaction Levy Policy is not scrapped immediately.
“We are tired of paying the e-levy, it is not a tax it is thievery. We don’t care whether government will go to IMF or to Afghanistan,” he said on the sidelines of the Arise Ghana demonstration on Wednesday, June 29.
“We cannot continue to pay e-levy until 2024. For now, we are dying, we can’t wait till 2024, the e-levy must be scrapped now.”
