By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph. D.
When the Deputy General-Secretary of the soon-to-be the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) says that his party is going to hold the feet of the key operatives of the incoming ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) to the fire, literally speaking, in order to ensure that the Akufo-Addo Administration fulfills its electioneering campaign promises, we hope that Mr. Koku Anyidoho (aka Margaret Jackson) fully appreciates what he is talking about (See “We’ll Put NPP on Fire to Fulfill Promises – Koku Anyidoho” 3News.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/20/16).
The fact of the matter is that both Mr. Anyidoho and the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress woefully lack the sort of credibility required to put the New Patriotic Party on its toes, as it were. Needless to say, the NPP has a considerable track-record of yeomanly performance whereas the leaders of the NDC have only been largely known to be pathological kleptocrats and sociopolitical sponges on the resources of the hardworking Ghanaian taxpayer. The NDC has carved a sinister niche for itself as a party of abject non-performance and endless impossibilities.
The NPP, on the other hand, has distinguished itself as the party of boundless possibilities. A striking case in point is when the NDC leadership self-righteously pooh-poohed then-Opposition Leader John Agyekum-Kufuor’s electioneering campaign promise that if voted into power, the New Patriotic Party government intended to implement a comprehensive National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
The NDC, under President Jerry John Rawlings, while claiming to be poor-people-oriented or “socially democratic,” nevertheless, preferred the dogged pursuit of the decidedly untenable Darwinian health policy of “Cash-and-Carry,” which was actually no progressive public policy at all but simply to callously let the poor and destitute in Ghanaian society literally die by an inhumane process of “Survival of the Fitness,” if when they came down with a treatable illness and went to the hospital but could not afford the cost of medical treatment.
Guess what, a decade later, all that the leaders of this faux-socialist party have been able to brag about is the fact that they have been able to enroll more than three times the number of health insurance subscribers enrolled into NHIS program since President Kufuor handed over the democratic reins of governance to President John Evans Atta-Mills, late, in January 2009. In other words, the leaders of the National Democratic Congress appear to have made practical failure the cornerstone of their development agenda.
And so when the former Communications Director of the Mills-Mahama government vows to responsibly keep the incoming key operatives of the Akufo-Addo Administration on their toes, it is not clear precisely how he and his colleagues intend to morally and soundly do the same. In the past, as the country’s main parliamentary opposition, the NDC leaders spent most of their time boycotting parliamentary proceedings while getting fully paid for criminally shirking the responsibilities for which they were mandated by Ghanaian voters to conduct the people’s business in the proverbial august House.
It is almost certain that besides their nauseating flair for the uncouth and unconscionable usage of foul language and screaming unprintable invectives at their political opponents, there is a diddly little that these movers and shakers of the so-called National Democratic Congress can contribute towards the healthy development of Ghanaian democracy and society at large.
*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
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