Amoafo-Yeboah to take tough decisions on governance

Story:Donald Ato Dapatem

An independent presidential hopeful, Mr Kwesi Amoafo-Yeboah has said that he decided to be an independent candidate in order to make tough and unpopular decisions that are needed to speed up the development pace of the country.
He noted that the quest by political parties to retain power by all means have made them to shy away from taking tough and unpopular decisions that are needed to propel the nation forward.
Mr Amoafo-Yeboah was speaking to the Daily Graphic on why he decided to enter the race as an independent presidential candidate for the 2008 general elections.
He said political parties were aware of the best decisions required to accelerate the pace of the nation’s development and enhance the living standards of the people, they were always scared to implement such policies because of fear of losing the election.
“At this point in the growth of our young democracy, I believe we need neutrality at the top to help harness the power of our collective brain power to concentrate it on solving the crucial problems facing our nation. This is something only an independent President can do”, he said.
“My decision to enter this race as an independent was based on my conviction that our past leadership under the organised political party system has failed us as a nation”, he said and added promise to tap the best brains across board for the accelerated development of the country.
“The political parties spend too much time playing the blame game. They are always pointing fingers at each other and blaming each other for problems in our society and our economy instead of concentrating on solutions to the problems”, he added.
He expressed the worry that political parties instead of seeking the interest of the populace have polarised the political atmosphere, and because of that there was no continuity in plans and projects from one administration to the other.
Mr Amoafo-Yeboah was of the view that the opposition party tends to sit on the side lines on critical issues waiting for the ruling government to fail so they could use that failure for political gains.
“The political parties spend too much time playing the blame game. They are always pointing fingers at each other and blaming each other for problems in our society instead of concentrating on solutions to the problem”, he said.
He alleged that another characteristic of the political party system was cronyism in government, where contracts were awarded along party lines so that contractors would contribute into the party’s coffers, therefore, those who were not members of a ruling party had to wait until their party was in power before they could get work to do.
When Mr Amoafo-Yeboah’s attention was drawn to the demands of the constitution that a president must appoint two-thirds of his ministers from parliament, he said that “I will work with the best brains in the country including MPs from other political parties ”.
He gave a hypothetical scenario that should he appoint a Minister of Finance from the NDC and his deputy from the NPP ;his government would have very little problem convincing NDC and NPP MPs to OK the budget.
Mr Amoafo-Yeboah said because all the political parties have the interest of the nation at heart, they would be attracted to his good policies and programmes and work with him. “I don’t think they will gang up against me, irrespective of their division.”