Three-time flagbearer of the People’s National Convention, (PNC) Dr. Edward Mahama, says excessive partisanship is largely to blame for the country’s economic woes. He has postulated that Ghana will keep struggling to attain the desired economic growth until the country pursues a national goal rather than partisan interests.
In an interview with Kumasi-based Ultimate Radio on the current economic challenges facing the country, the former PNC leader said no one party or leader can independently succeed in transforming the country until the partisan approach is replaced with a pursuit of national goals.
Speaking to Ultimate Radio’s Ebenezer Afanyi Dadzie, Dr. Edward Mahama bemoaned the practice where incumbents fail to continue or sustain projects undertaken by successive governments for political expediency.
“We have allowed partisan politics to usurp national goals so that whether it is economics or education or health, we have put everything on the party pedal and when one party takes over governance from another party, all its projects and programmes are dismantled for new projects of the new party” he bemoaned.
The astute physician described the engrained political mindset towards development as illogical as according to him, “it is the people of Ghana who should have the programme and not the NDC, the NPP or the PNC.”
He warned that if Ghanaians do not turn from the political blind shades to support the efforts of the President, all his efforts at remedying the corruption menace, the falling cedi and the ailing economy will run aground with its attendant repercussions on the country.
Dr. Mahama further recounted how much politicking had caused the country huge sums of money chronicling how much the nation sunk into the 2008 runoff and the amount of time and money that were lost in the 2012 electoral petition in the supreme court saying “we can never get our economics right if we do not get our politics right.”
Meanwhile with a contrasting view, an Economist, Kwamina Essilfie Adjei, who also spoke to Ultimate Radio said partisanship in its entirety should not stifle economic growth.
Speaking to the Host of the Ultimate Morning Show, Kofi Owusu, Mr. Essilfie Adjei cited that, “many European countries have been practicing similar partisan politics for years, but their economies are sound”.
According to him, partisanship is an integral part of democracy and that it behooves leadership to pursue a national agenda.