News:
September 8, 2016
Obuasi West Member of Parliament (MP), Kwaku Kwarteng, has laughed off President John Mahama’s pledge to give a meter to each household in a Central regional town, Abura.
The Minority MP says the President is taking over a job assigned to a public company, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
Speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show Wednesday, he expressed disappointment in the lack of candor in the President’s promise.
“I wish we would promise bolder things…provision of meter that should be done by ECG?…It is now a campaign promise by the National Democratic Congress (NDC)?” he expressed shock.
He said Ghanaians want a leader who can take them out of a ‘crisis’ and not one who promises to do a routine work done by District Managers of the ECG.
The 2016 campaign is underway and it appears to be shaping up as a campaign of what the New Patriotic Party (NPP) calls it is possible versus what the NDC has criticized as unrealistic.
The NPP’s one-district, one-factory has been dismissed as unrealistic. But after president Mahama hit the campaign trail in the Central region, his promise to provide 1,500 meters has been dismissed as timid.
Name-calling or truth-telling
President Mahama has expressed hurt that the 2016 NPP flagbearer Akufo-Addo has been insulting him by a constant reference that he is an incompetent leader.
But responding to Mr Mahama’s concern about mud-slinging language from the NPP, Kwaku Kwarteng finds no insult in describing a leader as incompetent.
“If I am not doing a job properly for which I am paid and somebody said I am incompetent, I would not take that as an insult,” he said.
He said it is for the President to do an introspective search to find out reasons why the NPP calls him incompetent.
Sparing the word incompetent as an insult, Mr Kwarteng suggested that descriptions like Nana Akufo-Addo is too short or he has cancer are “the wrong things we think should not happen in a campaign”.
This is the second time President Mahama has taken exception to the description.
During his “Changing Lives, Transforming Ghana’ tour in the Greater Accra Region last November, President John Mahama appeared irked by the description.
“I’ll take that word from Kufuor or from Rawlings because they’ve been there before. All of you guys [NPP critics] have never ever come near the presidency. Do you know what it takes to be a president? And you stand and say incompetent Mahama administration,” Mahama said.
He also said, “I will not allow useless insults to distract me.”
Green book distribution evidence of abuse of incumbency
The Obuasi West MP also condemns what he believes is an abuse of incumbency by President Mahama.
He said while the “very expensive” printing of the ‘Green book’ to catalogue government’s achievements may not be considered an abuse of power, the manner of its distribution confirms the opposition’s fears.
“These books have been given to NDC communicators, something printed with state money…you go with them to a program and they pull out the green book as though their party gave to them, and you think it is not an abuse of incumbency?”