After Electing A Government, The Blame Game Must End    

Fortunately or unfortunately the elections have been lost and won – with intriguing drama.

Barely a couple of weeks ago, we had a Transition Team to set up, and a President to induct.

Now, that’s history. What is imperative and relevant today, however, is unfinished businesses to complete to impact lives and help attain and sustain goals.

These include stabilising the energy situation and programming for the future in line with the vision of the ruing administration.

Clearly, there is a resolution on the part of the new administration to tweak the Free SHS Programme to save resources to trigger positive impact in other sectors to enhance lives and livelihoods, while in the shortest time possible, youth and women are empowered to move into income generation bracket in reducing unemployment and dependency ratio in Ghana.

One man’s meat, one man’s poison

The exiting New Patriotic Party (NPP) came with a plan to govern this country. It succeeded in 2020 in retaining the confidence of the electorate.

By 2021 and 2022, it was up against a hill, in maintaining that confidence and grip. It took things for granted and began losing the space, hoping against hope that it would not get so bad.

It did, however, when its previous relations with the media began getting stale. Still, party and government, steeped in unholy obstinacy, prayed and acted as if there could not be any substitute for the NPP and particularly a ‘beleaguered’ Mahama.

So, the ordinary citizen, knowing and feeling the heat and the situation, decided to return to the first wife or husband – in typical democracies without a Third Force such as Ghana.

In a typical democracy in which it is either party A or party B in power, the saint could easily become a leper, and a victor victim.

That was the message sent by angry citizens, led by angry youth, who want their piece of the pie right here and right now, without considering any virtue in a Free SHS Programme that, in their opinion, satisfied only Free SHS beneficiaries.

NDC’s argument

According to the NDC, if you had work to do, you could save and give your kid the best education or training to find the job of one’s choice.

That theory in political economy is against that of the NPP that says basic education to Free SHS level should conveniently position young people to move forward in life, in accessing basic jobs.

It is certainly one party’s theory against the other – with the millions of uninterested segments of the population dithering between the two or being stark indifferent about education in a nation where graduates abound, without any hope of them accessing jobs today or tomorrow.

So, the NDC in reviewing or seeking to review the NPP’s hyped policy, is seeking to appropriate the budget to attain, in their view better, social goals.

As citizens may appreciate, that is their privilege, but that is also the government’s mandate and decision to take.

Goosie magic?

With the NDC’s Goosie Tanoh heading a strategic area set to deliver on job creation and entrepreneurial training, hopes are bright that Ghana and the NDC might secure some results in that regard.

While education is critical and important, job creation is indispensable anywhere on the globe. People finding jobs to do as a necessity is normal because they can always educate themselves later from their own resources as opportunities come up.

If we, therefore, have enough jobs, we may be sure that people, particularly youth can assure themselves that – even at 40 – they can use two or three years to improve themselves, before moving on again, better positioned to earn more.

The arguments, notwithstanding, let us see how the new administration does it and how much Ghana and the interests of the electorate they put into it.