Promise to reduce, restore, abolish marks NDC 2020 manifesto

The main opposition NDC has launched its 2020 manifesto, a dam of 385 ‘wills’, waiting for a voter signal to spill out into many tributaries of reduce, restore and abolish.

True, former president John Dramani Mahama has said he is coming to correct his mistakes but an ancillary to that it that he is also coming to correct Akufo-Addo’s ‘missteps’.

He says he will restore Arabic Studies in the new curriculum ‘taken out by Akufo-Addo government’ and he would also restore indigenous participation in financial sector, largely red carded by the central bank after their books were found in the dire red.

Akufo-Addo restored the teacher training allowance cancelled by Mahama and Mahama says he will restore the automatic employment of teachers cancelled by Akufo-Addo.

The teachers could after 2020 find their trade back to a 2012 status quo of an easy allowance and an easy job. In a sense, the teachers, among the most politically courted group in Ghana, could find themselves going forward by going backwards.

Mahama said he will restore the distribution of free fertilisers and chemicals to cocoa farmers which was replaced by Akufo-Addo with a subsidy.

The government has pointed out that under Mahama, Ghana averagely produced barely 800,000 metric tonnes of cocoa, less than the one million record set by his predecessor , Prof. John Evans Atta Mills, in 2011.

 

In essence, in Mahama’s final years, Ghana produced less cocoa with free fertilisers.

Akufo-Addo has therefore called Mahama to stop shedding crocodile tears before Ghana’s estimated 800,000 cocoa farmers on their 1.9million hectares of cocoa farms.

Not to be outdone, Mahama has called Akufo-Addo wicked because he has only added 40 cedis to the price of cocoa over the four year-period. Mahama, under his four years, added 263cedis, buying cocoa at 475 cedis.

In infrastructure believed to be the NDC’s biggest strength, John Mahama wants to restore the transfer of 2.5 percentage points of existing VAT to the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF) to help fund his new construction plans.

According to the manifesto, when Mahama is not restoring something Akufo-Addo has removed, he would also be reducing what Akufo-Addo has increased.

Most notably is the about 123 elephant-sized government. After more than three years of clamouring CSOs asking for a slash in the size of the executive, Mahama is positioning himself as the man with the knife.

For example, instead of having two different ministers for railways, and aviation, he says he would simply have one ministry of transport to cater for the two and even throw in ports and harbours.

And so a future NDC will “reduce the current size of ministers and deputies and reduce the number of political appointees in the Presidency and other institutions.

In other reduction news, the NDC is promising to reduce inflation to the “barest minimum.” And facts show the NDC knows the barest Ghana has seen. At 6.7%, the year 2010 marked the lowest inflation rate since 1985.

Find more statistics at Statista

But when the NDC goes low, it also goes high. Mahama left office with inflation at 17.46%, the highest since 2003.

Holding the title for extremes, inflation tends to be a heat wave and flooding under the NDC while the data shows its usually a mild weather under NPP.

The NDC also wants to reduce the cost of rent by baiting landlords and real estate developings with tax incentives while the NPP has promised to give loans to tenants.

The opposition also promises that corporate income tax for medium size companies will be reduced from the current 25per cent to 15per cent.

The most understated promise is the one in which the party has vowed that more mothers will live under Mahama because it plans to reduce maternal mortality by 50 per cent.

Ghana has an estimated maternal mortality rate of 308 deaths per 100,000 live births. It has not declined by more than 1.9%. over the last several years.

It has taken Ghana more than 17 years to reduce the maternal mortality rate by 36% – from 484 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2000 to the current 308 deaths per 100,000 live births.

The NDC 2020 promise remains probably the most ambitious policy in the 146-page document.

There are four things the NDC has promised to abolish. They are the mandatory national service and teacher licensure examinations for graduate teachers.

They would also abolish the double-track system in senior high schools and also abolish the requirement of guarantors as a pre-condition for accessing student loans.

But when it came to the law introduced by Akufo-Addo, banning the importation of salvaged vehicles, the NDC manifesto did not even give it the courtesy of the more mild word ‘abolish.’

Mahama, to rambling cheers, announced he would ‘scrap’ the controversial law which the government says would help grow the automobile industry after bringing in some German investors.

Mahama has argued scrapping it will save the local automotive industry in hubs like Suame Magazine, Kokompe and Abossey Okai.

And so after some three hours of hearing the NDC launch its manifesto, Ghanaians may now have a sense of what to expect in 2020 as far as words go.

It appears the NDC is a plastic surgeon unhappy at the work of the current plastic surgeon. Mahama would like to may be restore some flesh to the cheeks, reduce the size of the nose and abolish breast implants.

As always after the work of Ghana’s only two political plastic surgeons, voters are handed the mirror of a ballot paper to have a look at themselves and decide whether the people look ugly or beautiful.