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Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central, Isaac Adongo, says President Akufo-Addo’s State of the Nation Address demonstrated he was completely out of touch with Ghana’s reality.
According to him, “I saw a President who is not with us, I saw a President who lives in a completely different world, and I saw a President who for the first time looked more humbling than I’ve ever seen him address the house because the reality is not looking well and it’s not reflecting well on the government.
“So despite all the flowery language, they knew that it’s the reality that as a country we’re not in the right place and we’re in a very difficult place.”
President Akufo-Addo delivered his State of the Nation Address Wednesday, March 8 on the floor of parliament where he addressed chiefly the economic challenges that have afflicted the country post-Covid-19.
However, his address has been described by some in the Minority as falsehoods and laughable.
They claim the President’s presentation on the state of the economy; the government’s debt problem as well as the Covid-19 expenditure is a misrepresentation of the true facts on the ground.
Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express, Isaac Adongo who is also a Member of parliament’s Finance Committee, stated that the government, and by extension the country, is at its lowest ebb hence the President’s demure demeanor.
“In managing an economy, and then managing a country, the biggest fear, all the fears that anybody would have in running an economy, we’ve met them. The first thing you do in running an economy is that your sovereignty is your most important asset that defines the confidence and the trust of people both local and international such that they can give you their money and go to sleep and believe that they will have their money.
“When a country gets to a point where it simply cannot pay and has to take the [dishonourable] decision to own up and say ‘look, we have mismanaged ourselves and we just cannot pay you, and that our sovereignty which is basically our promise and our integrity which we gave you is worth nothing. And that you are going to lose your money, that is the lowest ebb that any government will ever get to and we’re there so we can’t dig further,” he said.
He continued, “When you have a situation where an economy is running consistently negative real interest rates, what it means is that if you were to give your money to government, and government were to pay you a certain interest rate as compensation, by the time you take the money, the inflation of the time will give you a negative position in terms of real value. That is a very difficult conversation to be had.
“When you manage an economy where the biggest player or stakeholder in dealing with unemployment in providing sustainable jobs, in providing livelihoods is the private sector, and the private sector must go out there and look for opportunities that deliver beyond 40% of margins so it can pay its cost of borrowing in order to stand the chance of managing the business, then you’re in a very difficult place.”
According to him, if the President could have had his way, he would probably have skipped addressing the nation entirely.
“So we’re in a place where without mincing words the President would have wished that this conversation was not constitutional but unfortunately it’s obviously something he cannot avoid,” he said.
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