UNPUBLISHED

TWO members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) have criticised the performance of Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom at the presidential debate held last Wednesday.
Alhaji M.N. D. Jawula said Dr Nduom’s claims of making the salaries and pensions of civil servants better were not feasible because he had tried it as Minister of Public Sector Reforms and failed.
Mr Gabby Otchere Darko, the Executive Director of the Danquah Institute, on the other hand said Dr Nduom’s responses at the presidential debate were “populist” in comparison with the substance presented by Nana Akufo-Addo, the presidential candidate of the NPP.
The two said these at a forum organised by the Publications Committee of the Commonwealth Hall of the University of Ghana, Legon and the Society for National Affairs (SoNA), dubbed the "Positive Agenda Forum".
Alhaji Jawula said Dr Nduom had tried to consolidate salaries during his term as Minister for Public Sector Reform in order to improve upon the salaries of low-income earners and also improve pensions when they retired but he had failed in that venture.
He told the students that he had been a civil servant and had had first-hand experience of the reforms that Dr Nduom had tried to institute but these had not resulted in anything positive.
“When a frog comes out of the river to tell you that there is a crocodile in there, you’ve got to believe him”, Alhaji Jawula said.
He said he had cause to confront Dr Nduom on the apparent failure of the reforms he claimed to be instituting in the public service.
He urged the students that voting for any other party apart from the NPP would make the country retrogress.
For Mr Otchere-Darko, Dr Nduom’s submissions at the debate was populist in comparison with the intelligent and eloquent submissions of Nana Akufo-Addo.
He said it was not practicable for the dead to receive their pension on the day they died, as Dr Nduom claimed at the debate and got away with.
It was more useful, he said, for people to rather have their pensions while living than when dead.
Mr Otchere-Darko further criticised the flag bearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Professor Atta Mills and his tenure at the Internal Revenue Service, (IRS) saying he did not make any successful contributions there to the tax revenue of the country.
He told students that in comparison with the 19-year tenure of the NDC, the NPP had more than delivered on its promise of positive change in its eight year tenure.
Other speakers at the forum were Mrs Akosua Frema-Opare, Mr Kennedy Agyepong, the MPs for Ayawaso West Wuogon and Assin North respectively, as well as Serwaa Safoa, a member of the NPP, and Mrs Samira Bawumia, the wife of the NPP vice-presidential candidate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, who all urged the students to vote for them in other to secure the future they were striving for.
31/10/08