The governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has mocked the opposition National Democratic Congress’ request for Ghanaians to contribute their ideas towards its manifesto.
At a press conference in Accra, Communications Director of the NPP, Yaw Buabeng Asamoah, wondered how a party touting its readiness to unseat the current administration in the 2020 general elections is lacking ideas to develop a manifesto.
“Having set up a manifesto committee, their first order of business is to ask 30 million Ghanaians to think for them,” Mr. Boabeng Asamoah
Although the NPP finds the request ludicrous, Mr. Buabeng Asamoah believes the NDC really needs help.
“Perhaps we should help them because they are very confused. They can’t find any ideas, even with all the time they have on their hands in opposition, they can’t find ideas to generate a manifesto that is capable of managing the affairs of this country by choice,” he queried.
A manifesto, he added, “[NDC] can put before us for us to assess and determine whether or not being in opposition they have been able to do something with what they didn’t have before.”
Providing his own suggestions for the manifesto, Mr. Buabeng Asamoah who is also MP for Adentan wanted the party to tell Ghanaians how, while in power, they run down a first-time oil-producing economy that was left for them.
“A rising growth rate in 2011 of 14 percent, they managed to collapse the financial sector and reduced growth to below four percent ending us up with the IMF [International Monetary Fund], that perhaps is the first idea,” he said.
The NDC says it is accepting contributions from Civil Society Organisations, Trade Unions and other members of the public, as it seeks to put out what it calls Grassroots Manifesto.
The appeal was contained in a statement issued and signed by the party’s Deputy General Secretary, Peter Boamah Otokunor.
“The 2020 manifesto committee of the National Democratic Congress in its bid to develop a ‘People’s Manifesto’ that speaks to the direct needs and concerns of the people, wishes to announce the request for Policy Memoranda from the general public, Civil Society Organisations, Trade Unions, Associations and other identifiable groups in the country,” the statement read.
Interested contributors, have been instructed to keep their policy memoranda not more than four A4 pages long and must be sent to ndcmanifesto2020@gmail.com.
