Lydia Forson, an actress and social media critic, has slammed Ghana’s President, H.E Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, for introducing the Electronic Transaction Levy.
She expresses surprise that someone who led the ‘Kume Preko’ demonstration in 1995 against the implementation of Value Added Tax (VAT) has now promoted E-Levy in the midst of all the current economic hardships.
According to the actress, she is unsure what has changed since the protestors went on the Kume Preko march over 27 years ago.
“It’s still hard to comprehend that our president led the Kume Preko in their fight against VAT (value-added tax) because to the high expense of life at the time. He’s justifying #elevy now, more than 25 years later, at a time when people are barely scraping by. What went wrong? Power?”
The demonstration in 1995 was held in protest of the Jerry John Rawlings administration’s implementation of the Value Added Tax (VAT).
With an estimated 100,000 people in attendance, it is considered to have been one of the largest protests in the country’s history.
The protest began peacefully but quickly became violent as unidentified intruders went on a shooting rampage, killing a few people.
Following the rally, Nana Akufo-Addo, Charles Wereko-Brobbey, Kwesi Pratt Jr, Akoto Ampaw, and Napoleon Abdulai wrote a book titled “Ghana: The Kume Preko Demonstrations: Poverty, Corruption, and the Rawlings Dictatorship.”
