Alban Sumana Kingsford
Bagbin, Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament, has warned the New Patriotic Party
(NPP) government that Ghanaians have become too enlightened to be deceived.
“For example, the NPP government, after
promising from opposition that they will transform Ghana in 18 months, have now
turned around to invite the NDC whose government they bastardised and called
incompetent, to join them to reason together for solutions to the depreciation
of the Cedi.
“They think they are smart; after failing to
deliver, they want to trick the NDC into a supposed collaboration so that at
the end of the day, when their failure is complete, they can turn around and
say, we invited the NDC to come on board and help and so the failure is the
failure of the NDC too.”
The Nadowli-Kaleo MP said this in a statement
copied to the Ghana News Agency to react to some recent happenings in
governance.
“The sudden invitation to the NDC has shocked
many because the NPP is known to ride the common boast that they have the men;
but observers are particularly shocked that when the NDC was in power and
invited the NPP to a national dialogue on the economy at Senchi, they refused
to attend.
“The reason why the NPP is now inviting us, to
help them think up solutions for the depreciation of the Cedi is that they want
to cleverly rope us into their failure. But they have failed already,” Mr
Bagbin added.
He said Ghanaians were aware that the Cedi was
performing far better in 2016 when the NDC left power. Indeed, by December
2016, the Cedi had been trading at GH¢4.20 to the dollar and was strengthening
against the American currency.
“However, in just two years that the NPP has
been in power, the Cedi has slipped to almost GH¢6.00 to a dollar, only making
marginal gains after the government announced its intent to pump almost a
billion dollars into the money market.
Mr Bagbin said, the Finance Minister’s recent
blame of Ghana’s delayed exit from the International Monetary Fund programme on
the NDC’s supposed reckless spending in 2016, was not true.
“How could we have overspent
in 2016, when we were already under the IMF programme?”
He said, the NPP thought they could get away
with heaping lies on the NDC from opposition, but Ghanaians were seeing who the
real incompetent people were and nothing would change the facts.
“Where are the 275 factories, they said they
will build; the economy they said they will build better, is now wobbling. Our
Cedi is depreciating against the major currencies, and now you want to cleverly
share the shame with NDC by inviting us for a bi-partisan conference on the Cedi,”
the Nadowli Kaleo MP said.
–GNA
