GACC Urges Government to Honour its Manifesto Promises

Ghana Anti Corruption Coalition (GACC), has reiterated its committment to continue with its monitoring of government projects in order to ensure judicious use of public resources.

As such, the GACC undertook an Oxfam funded project dubbed, “Citizens Action for Public Accountability and Pro-Poor Spending” with the aim to create public awareness on these commitments and also mobilize citizens to demand greater accountability in the management of public resources.

GACC, under the project gathered from official reports, such as the 2016 NPP Manifesto, the 2017 and 2018 State of the Nation Addresses (SoNA) by the President, the 2017 and 2018 Annual Budgets and Economic Policy Statements and other NPP government policy statements related to their performance in office, and published the report findings in July, 2018.

The ruling New Patriotic Party NPP, whilst in opposition, made several promises in its 2016 Manifesto.

Upon assumption into office in January, 2017, the government repeated most of those promises and assured Ghanaians of its commitment to execute them.

With this, GACC organized a meeting with Government and other ruling party leaders on the current state of implementation of the Government’s promises in Financial Transparency and Accountability, at the Coconut Groove Regency Hotel in Accra.

In general, according to the preliminary report findings presented by Mr. Samuel Harrison-Cudjoe, a Research Officer at GACC, a number of the promises have been delivered while others are either in the pipe line or not touched at all.

He said, the NPP Government in their manifesto sought to shift focus from taxation to production by reducing taxes, it has however failed in that sector by introducing numerous taxes.

Again, the election of MMDCEs was put on hold. As article 55 is an entrenched clause, there should be a referendum requiring a turnout of at least 40% and over 75% of those voting to vote in favour for the proposal to be passed.

But on 1 December, 2019, President Akufo-Addo cancelled the referendum.

The report also disclosed that, the fight against corruption is not satisfactory so far.

However, it is clear that some of the promises have been executed, the most prominent ones being the establishment of the Office of Special Prosecutor.

Since the government has another year to finish its term, CSOs are monitoring the government in fulfilling its promises and hold the government accountable to deliver on those promises made.

Mrs. Beauty Emefa Narteh, the Executive Secretary of GACC, in her closing remarks noted that, GACC intends to continue with this exercise not only for this one, but will be a continuous process.

“It is hoped that the NPP government will accept the Report in good faith and work with it so as to honour all its promises as it prepares towards election in 2020,” She said.

According to Mrs. Emefa Narteh, as the political parties are preparing to start campaigning for the 2020 general elections, it behoves on CSOs and the citizens to remind politicians and parties to honour promises they made during electioneering campaigns .

She therefore noted that, the final report will be published soon, to ascertain how honourable Government is, with regards to its campaign promises in Financial Transparency and Accountability.

Source: Ghanaiandemocrat