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The NPP flagbearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, on Saturday said Ghana desperately needs the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to save it from the hardship inflicted on the country by the Mills-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration. President Mills, he said, instead of steering the affairs of the nation toward stability and progress, is dodging �booms� about corruption and �nyafu nyafu� chopping by �greedy bastards� and �Team B� players from the founder of their party, and preoccupied with bitter feuds between FONKAR and GAME, OLONKAR and SADAM. Speaking at the 3rd International Conference of the NPP�s overseas branches in Hamburg, Germany, which ended yesterday, Nana Akufo-Addo said electing Professor John Evans Atta Mills as president was the greatest mistake made by the people because most of the promises made remain unfulfilled, with the country on auto-piloting. �Today, thanks to the Mills administration, politics and politicians have become discredited phenomena. In 2008, Candidate Mills promised �prosperity for all.� Today, what do we see? More than half a million more people have fallen below the poverty line since 2009. Morale in our country is at an all-time low. Everywhere you go in Ghana, the song on the lips of our people is the same- �enkoyie, enkoyie,� he pointed out. He said Ghana�s problem, now, is the result of a leadership crisis. The person steering the affairs of the country, he said, has no track record in leadership, confirming the question he posed in 2008 ahead of that year�s polls, whether it was reasonable to put the country�s destiny in the hands of an untested driver. �In 2008, in delivering a speech on the platform of the Busia Foundation during the electioneering campaign, I asked a simple question which has, unfortunately, turned out to be prophetic. I asked whether we want to drive ahead and take the highway to greater freedom and prosperity or pull the brakes, turn back, reset the mileage and put back on our development vehicle the �L� sign for �Learner Driver�. �Today, those in charge of the administration of the state have virtually put the brakes on our development vehicle. We need to take control of the vehicle again, and as quickly as possible. Indeed, even within the circles of the ruling party itself, there appears to be serious divisions of opinion as to the capacity of the current driver of the Yutong bus to take us safely to our destination�. Nana Addo said the NPP cannot remain indifferent in the face of relegation of statecraft to the background, following the bitter internal rivalry in the governing party. �We cannot sit by unconcerned when the all-important affairs of tackling poverty, creating jobs, providing security, fixing our worsening physical infrastructure, investing in the welfare of the young, old and sick are all being set aside in a never-ending struggle to determine who really is in charge. Surely, our beloved country deserves better,� the NPP flagbearer lamented. Ghana today is reeling under the needless weight of a leadership crisis, he added. According to him, the NDC has broken virtually all the promises it made to the people of Ghana in 2008. Citing the internationally recognized pollster, Gallup, Nana Akufo-Addo said under President Mills, over 12.7million people of the Ghanaian population cannot afford the cost of food. �Those who admit to living comfortably have dropped from 20 percent in 2007 to 4 percent of the population in 2010. In 2007, 11 percent of Ghanaians said they were suffering under severe economic hardships. Two years into the so-called �Better Ghana� agenda of President Mills, the number of Ghanaians who cannot cope at all with the harsh economic realities has shot up by a whopping 210 percent, from 11 percent of the population to 34 percent. To put it bluntly, over 8.2 million Ghanaians are saying that �enkoyie kroaaaa!� They have been delivered a bitter Ghana, instead of a better Ghana,� he stressed. According to him, the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme, the social welfare benefit system introduced by the NPP administration to provide some regular financial support for the poor, is dying under the Mills government because of lack of capital injection. �Today in Ghana, we are living in a poverty-owning democracy, even as more and more Ghanaians fall below the poverty line of $1.35 a day. This situation is not acceptable. The people trumpeting alleged �care for you� are the very people worsening the plight of the ordinary Ghanaian each succeeding day,� he said. He wondered where the better Ghana administration Mills promised Ghanaians has suddenly gone to. He said a vote for change should not mean a vote for less money in people�s pockets. �The 2008 vote for change has rather reduced the people of Ghana to an ever-worsening situation of joblessness and hopelessness, with more and more people begging on the streets for small change. We, the NPP, therefore, have a great responsibility to restore the hope, trust and confidence of the Ghanaian people in their government. We will have to introduce urgent policies that will put our young people to work,� he stressed. The NPP, he said, has a track record. �Under the eight-year leadership of President John Agyekum Kufuor, we gave Ghana its best economy in our half-a-century of independence. We achieved macro-economic stability for the longest period in our history. We reduced significantly both interest rates and inflation, while expanding by eight-fold the size of the national economy from $4billion to $32billion in the eight years of the NPP; not to talk about the spirit of hope and optimism which abounded then, as opposed to the spirit of gloom and depression engulfing the nation today�. According to him, while the NPP worked hard to wean Ghana off the financial dependence on the Bretton Woods institutions- the World Bank and the IMF- for the country to rely on its ingenuity to design and promote development, the NDC has succeeded in returning the country to the bad old days. �We had a sovereign credit rating of B+ and the ability to borrow on the open financial markets on our own. Indeed, in 2007, our first sovereign bond issue which was for $750 million, was over-subscribed to the tune of $3.2 billion. At that time, we had not discovered oil in commercial quantities,� he emphasised. The NPP flagbearer said the party will replicate and improve on its previous achievements when the party comes back to power in 2013. �With your help and that of the Almighty God, when we come back in 2013, we will once again inspire Ghanaians with the spirit of dynamism, creativity, self-reliance and innovation towards our growth and development; and bring back hope and opportunity to all Ghanaians, particularly our youth, currently faced with the future of no hope, no opportunity and no employment�. He tasked the delegates at the conference to contribute their quota towards victory for the party and its candidate in the 2012 election. �It is imperative for the Ghanaian nation that we win this election to remove a non-performing government from office and bring back the good governance and strong economic development associated with NPP rule. The Ghanaian people deserve no less,� he said amidst spontaneous applause. He paid glowing tribute to the founding fathers of the party. �We should bear in mind, though, that we are not the first to traverse this road of sacrifice. J.B. Danquah, Edward Akufo-Addo, William Ofori-Atta, Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey, Solo Odamtten, S.D. Dombo, K.A. Busia, Baffour Osei Akoto, Victor Owusu, R.R. Amponsah, B.K. Adama, S.G. Antoh, Modesto Apaloo, Attoh Okine, Ashie Nikoi, Henry Thompson, K. Y. Attoh, Kow Richardson, Osei Baiddoo, B.J. da Rocha, Adu Boahen, Peter Ala Adjetey, Kwame Safo-Adu, Joseph Agyenim Boateng and countless of unheralded others risked their lives to fight against the stifling of our freedoms and to create the space that has enabled multi-party democracy to take root in Ghana today, for the benefit of all Ghanaians. We owe them eternal gratitude,� he said. The theme of the three-day conference, which was attended by party chieftains including the NPP National Chairman, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, was: �Recapturing Power 2012�, with �All Hands On Deck� being the sub-theme.