A former Deputy Finance Minister and Member of Parliament for Obuasi West in the Ashanti region, Kwaku Kwarteng, wants the governing party to overhaul what he calls “the corrupt public procurement regime” as one of the ways to enable it to break the eight-year political cycle.
This piece of advice was contained in a statement written by the Obuasi West MP ostensibly to his party, titled “To break the eight, we must first break the norm”.
According to him, since independence, the political norm has been for parties to praise their past achievements and make grand promises for the future during elections.
The immediate past chairman of Parliament’s Finance Committee added that political parties also tend to depict their opponents in the worst possible light.
He lamented that politicians have mastered this art, forgetting that politics should be about the future of the children and the motherland.
Mr Kwarteng said election campaigns have been reduced to bitter struggles between competitors seeking power for the wrong reasons.
“It is this primitive political culture that has led to the belief that all politicians are the same and produced the eight-year cycle we are seeking to break. To break the eight therefore, we must first break that norm by doing the following: Acknowledge the past and present failures of the political class to provide the kind of quality leadership required to avert the mess in which we find our country today.”
The Obuasi West MP emphasised that the government must adopt deep and far-reaching reforms to address decades of poor politics and economic mismanagement.
He asserted that the government must convince voters of its unwavering determination to fix the country, stay committed despite challenges, and ensure that there are no untouchables.
“We must lead by example. As a precondition for any reforms, we must demonstrate the sacrifices we shall make as politicians to convince our people that we are in this together. We must address concerns about how much of our national resources we spend on ourselves as politicians and take steps to overhaul the corrupt public procurement regime we inherited from previous governments and have continued to live with.”
Mr Kwarteng stated that once the government leads by example, it can credibly tell the people that Ghana is sinking in a common boat and call all Ghanaians to action.
“As a political party, if we sincerely believe and can demonstrate our faithfulness to these commitments, breaking the eight will follow naturally.”
