By Acheampomaa Abigail
Ghanaian cardiothoracic surgeon, academic, and politician, Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, has stated that he doesn’t regret involving himself in politics.
He made this revelation on the Breakfast Show on GTV after he was questioned as to whether he regretted his decision.
“No, you see, with politics, you can do a lot for the people. Because I knew I was going on retirement so why don’t I seek political office? And what I wanted to do was not in health but in science and technology, because I have not seen any country that has developed without the capacity to manufacture things for yourself. We can’t afford to import things from toothpicks to aircraft and expect that the country will develop. So, that’s what I want to change in this country, and I nearly succeeded,” he said.
According to him, there was a blockade on his quest to use his political power as the then Minister of Environment, Science, and Technology to change and improve the manufacturing sector.
“The bottleneck was that I sold this idea to the president, and he gladly accepted it. We started the project at the atomic energy, we were going to build a foundry, a machine tool centre, a CNCI, which is a Computer Numerical Control Machine Centre using computerized techniques to manufacture spare parts increments and so on. So, we started to put up the buildings and then some of them were almost completed. We bought the first batch of equipment and I left government and the project stalled. And nothing happened again, even until now. But I gave all the notes to my successor and we talk about it,” he emphasized.
Moreover, he encouraged everyone to get involved in politics after a viewer asked if medical professionals could engage in political activities.
“Why not? We have to get everybody, not medical professionals, everyone should get involved. Otherwise, you will get some idiots deciding for you,” he concluded.
