Professor Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang, the running mate to former President John Dramani Mahama has said that Ghana requires a different environment, and urgently so.
Therefore, she said, the Ghanaian voter is presented, again, with the experienced, humble, focused, and truthful John Mahama, who she said has always consulted, out of respect and out of the conviction that knowledge does not reside in the head of any one person.
Delivering an address at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA) auditorium in Accra on Monday, April 24 during her outdooring by the National Democratic Congress (NDC), she said “The condescending sees this as a sign of not having original ideas. The unpretentious see it as a sign of understanding the foundations of democracy, which is consensus building, the clearest signpost to sustainable peace. I see it as a sign of strength, and I feel privileged to work with him.”
She stated that consensus building should be the fulcrum of any progressive, positive project.
It has already been demonstrated to us how, without such a foundation, the Ghana Without Aid has turned to Ghana Without Compass.
“The choice is clear; let’s make it on December 7 this year. Corruption is rampant in too many government and non government institutions; sadly, those institutions meant to check on corruption have been significantly weakened. We must strengthen the institutions and we will do just that when the NDC comes to power from January 2025, God willing.
“It is our duty to ensure that our sources of wealth are not given away to obscure entities shrouded in opaque deals. We must not arrive at a destination where our national assets and natural resources are treated by some as if they were assets of their own creation, to be willed forever to relatives and friends.
“We must be passionate about justice, about the protection of our environment, about protecting our differently abled citizens. We must be passionate about institutions that are responsive to our collective needs. We must be passionate about stamping out corruption.
“Let no one tell us otherwise, not even those who have so alienated themselves from reality as to be impervious to the truth—the truth of women delivering on the floor, of children waiting for a benevolent person to advance much-needed vaccines, of young children learning in dangerous circumstances; of teachers threatened and parents intimidated from their core functions of caring for their own children; of those who can no longer afford healthy and once generally affordable meals euphemistically called “face the wall” and “kofi broke man”, or of elderly citizens who must picket for their own money. What is that?” She said.
She added “Let no one tell us that the culture of silence has become the norm, let no one tell us that eight persons were shot in cold blood because they had gone to exercise their civic responsibility of voting, and that it was all right for a member of parliament to call them criminals; or that it is okay for SALL to have no representative in parliament for four years under a democracy because someone whimsically decided hours to the elections that they could not vote for a parliamentary candidate. And please don’t tell us that the Bank of Ghana, rather than defending itself from accusations of breach of procedure, can choose to label those who raised the matter publicly as hooligans who should have followed procedure.
“And at the time of accounting to the people, let no one pretend that they have more human rights than those they have consciously disenfranchised and those to whom justice has been shamefully denied.
“When those otherwise loud voices we assumed spoke for the voiceless have gone into self-imposed silence, and deafness and blindness, should we honestly be surprised at the high levels of cynicism if not downright mistrust of leaders? Of our youth in despair?”
