The 2012 presidential candidate of the Progressive People�s Party, Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, has accused the governing party of blowing the tax payers� money on the 2012 elections.
According to him, the country�s current economic woes�including a huge budget deficit, which stood at 8.5 percent of GDP as of September 2013, as captured by the 2014 Budget statement�could be put down to the NDC�s use of taxpayers� money to buy votes in 2012.
�I don�t want to make this unnecessarily political, but if you look at the 2012 elections, you go back to the 2008 elections, you go to 2004, after every election, budget deficits; after everyone and this one [2012] was bad. I mean it was [the] worst�, the former Minister in charge of Public Sector Reforms told Journalists Tuesday.
According to the Group Nduom Chairman, �the deficit may not be as huge, but when you look at the size of the economy, ok, the amount of money involved is much bigger than we�ve ever had in our history, and that�s a significant part of the problems that we are experiencing�.
�And unfortunately, we didn�t spend those monies on building superhighways or building oil refineries or building power plants. We bought cars for people, we bought ipads for people, we paid for billboards, we did all sorts of other things to make some people temporarily happy so they can go and cast a vote a certain way. That�s what we did with the money and the money is gone. There�s no return coming�, Dr Nduom bewailed.
�When I say it, you�ll say: �Oh he was a competitor so maybe he is jealous�. I�m not jealous. I�ll be jealous of something more genuine and more productive and if somebody does something good, I�ll be there and say: �Oh I wish I did that, but not that. So if you go and buy power that way, and we have this sort of a problem, who should we blame�, the former Energy Minister asked.
He nonetheless said: ��But I�m not interested in the blame part. I say work. You took our money, now work for it. Pay us back. With good results. That�s why I also look at the rest of Ghana people and I say: �Don�t look at me, you get what you vote for. And this is what we have. That�s what we voted for�, he said.
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