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In a quick riposte to media reports that the ruling NDC government seemingly wasted $ 5 billion to finance its campaign during the 2012 general elections, Fifi Fiavi Franklin Kwetey has sought to set the record straight in order to defuse the controversy over the claims. A publication by The Chronicle newspaper on Tuesday, July 16, 2013 revealed that the incumbent government blown such whopping sums �buying votes of hapless Ghanaians.� According to the Bank of Ghana, government ran into a deficit of GHC 8.7 billion, equivalent to US $5 billion, in public finance in 2012, �amounting to 12.1 % of Gross Domestic Product, using the rebased GDP members. That huge expenditure is referred to by contemporary economic historians as the highest recorded in the Politico-economic history of this country.� Fifi Kwetey, Minister of State in charge of Allied and Financial Institutions, was quoted to have said on Joy FM�s �News file� that the controversial GHC 8.7 billion excess expenditure in 2012 incurred by the government under the leadership of President John Dramani Mahama was because government had to do whatever was necessary to clinch victory in an election year. �We (NDC Government) needed to do what we needed to do politically�some of them�not to raise taxes on petroleum prices in an election year,� he was quoted. But speaking on Oman FM on Tuesday, Fifi Kwetey explained that the money in question was used to remit Ghana�s huge deficit. According to him, it was used to settle some wages in the public sector and provide subsidies on utility and fuel including other domestic requirements which cost over GHC 6 billion. He debunked the claims in the publication, insisting that government did not use the money to finance its campaign strategy in the elections last year, but rather used it to �better the lives� of the people. He was also very critical of the Ghanaian mentality that �everything must be affordable� and so, admonished the nation to bury such mindset and face the reality.