A leading member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, has said former President Mahama does not have any message for the 2020 Election.
Speaking in an interview with Paul Adom-Otchere on Good Evening Ghana Show on Metro TV last Thursday which was sighted by ghanawish.com Gabby, who was the first Executive Director of pro-NPP policy analysis think tank, Danquah Institute, said, “When you look at all the research, it tells you that the main opposition candidate is not rising but clearly it appears that there is something about his record which I’m not too sure so I really wonder what his message will be.”
He said it would be difficult for Mr. Mahama and his NDC to project themselves as the messiahs of the economy after running same between 2012 and 2016.
“He was the most blessed president ever in this country’s history … by the time he took over, we were just a year or so an oil producer; cocoa prices were good. Ghana had really not much of a debt … but what did he do? He wasted the opportunity,” Gabby said.
He accused Mr. Mahama and his NDC of signing reckless power contracts that never helped the country, saying “Mahama’s gov’t acted like merchants of war. He and his team benefited from the ‘dumsor’ crisis by creating a new crisis for Ghana.”
Gabby said that due to the reckless economic management by Mr. Mahama and his NDC, the current government had to pay arrears that date back to the former regime in many sectors of the economy, even though there was enough money in the system at the time to handle all of them.
“Just the last couple of years, this government had to pay Ghana Education Service arrears dating back to 2010. Even for the North, scholarships for secondary school education had not been paid from 2014, this government had to pay that … arrears in the energy sector, arrears in the road sector amounting to GH¢2 billion, so what did they actually use the money for? ”“And they borrowed more than any other government in the history of this country,” he stated.
Mr. Otchere-Darko made it clear that the NPP did not collapse the banking sector as claimed by the NDC and added that it was rather owners and managers of those banks who rather put depositors in danger, adding the weak supervision under NDC made matters worse.
Reacting to allegations that he and his law firm – Africa Legal Services – are in charge of all government contracts, he said, “I do not do government contracts. I only represent private clients as a lawyer. My Law Firm, as a policy, does not represent any government, ministry, department or agency.”
