The just-ended 8th National Congress of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) held in Kumasi last Saturday must have caused the Ghanaian tax payer huge sums of money.
Tongues are wagging in the Golden City over the ostentatious display of wealth and flashy state-owned vehicles before, during and after the congress organized by the ruling party to elect national Executives to steer affairs of the party for the next four years.
Brand new 2014 state-registered land cruisers were on display in the city from Friday to Sunday, blowing sirens and moving from one street to another in Kumasi. The picturesque nature of the convoy of vehicles that paraded the Garden City between the period of the congress appear to be a direct opposite of the self-acclaimed moderate socialist NDC of the early 2000, the period where the party struggled to field candidates for various position.
A leading member of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. George Ayisi Boateng told 'The Chronicle' in an interview that he personally took time on Sunday to count the number of vehicles that paraded the Kumasi-Accra road and was bamboozled by the sight of the fleet of expensive vehicles decorated with NDC paraphernalia.
Mr. Ayisi Boateng claims he personally counted over 168 green plated state registered brand New Toyota Land Cruisers heading to Accra from the Ashanti Regional capital on Sunday morning, a day after the congress. According to the NPP leading member, the number excludes those that left on Saturday evening.
�I personally took the pain to count the vehicles and I found 168 brand new vehicles and this does not include those I didn�t see. Imagine the cost of the fuel used by all those vehicles is on the poor Ghanaian tax payer,� he observed.
Mr. Ayisi Boateng avers that the situation confirms the sheer opulence and ostentatious display of wealth alluded to by the General Secretary of the Convention People�s Party (CPP), Mr. Ivor Kobina Greenstreet last Saturday.
Mr. Ayisi Boating noted that to make matters more worrying, most of these vehicles had only the drivers sitting in it, meaning that state officials using these vehicles might have boarded flights back to Accra and wasted the tax payers money on fuel.
He noted that drivers of these vehicles were also driving carelessly on the road with little concern about causing accidents.
According to him, never in his life has he witnessed such expensive, money wasting intra-party congress in the country like what took place last Saturday.
�This is nothing compared to that of the NPP; not at all and this is the NDC which prides itself as a socialist party that believes in the downtrodden. This no doubt confirms the claims by Dr. Kwabena Adjei about the excessive �moneycracy� within the party,� Mr. Ayisi Boateng noted.
The NPP founding member further noted that the kind of expensive billboards mounted and the fanciful campaigning by the candidates, despite the fact that this is only an internal election to elect leaders, were unprecedented in Ghana�s democratic history.
�In all this, the most unfortunate aspect of the situation is that it is the ordinary tax payer that bears the brunt of the extravagant spending. There is a saying in Akan that: �If you don�t get anything for your in-law, you don�t turn around and rob him or her as well,� but that is exactly what the NDC party and their officials are doing,� the NPP leading member observed.
My Ayisi Boateng further said he is surprised at the indifferent attitude of the founder of the NDC and former President, Mr. Jerry John Rawlings, who prides himself as an ambassador of probity and accountability in the country.
The NPP leading member said the silence of Mr. Rawlings was becoming increasingly loud each passing day and this he said makes him wonder if the former President was really in this country.
�I wonder if Mr. Rawlings is aware of the spectre of unbridled corruption and sheer opulence of current public officials and party members; if he is asleep, then somebody should tell him that he has been in slumber for far too long, he should wake up, I am not sure this is the NDC he wished to build and for that reason killed many innocent souls.�
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