Some Good News At Last … As Prez Mahama Delivers State Of The Nation’s Address

For the last time before the 2016 elections which he seeks a second term in office, President John Dramani Mahama will on Thursday, February 25, 2016, address the Ghanaian public on his stewardship on State of the Nations presentation.
President Mahama will appear before Parliament to deliver the address which will expectedly catalogue his administration’s achievements.

The Republic Newspaper AND GhanaPoliticsOnline.Com can confirm that unlike previous such events where he is expected to enumerate the previous year’s achievements this time (being an election year and the end of his first term in office); he will be highlighting his administration’s cumulative achievement in the past four years of his first term in office.
President Mahama would be telling Ghanaians how his administration had managed the affairs of country and would use the argument to make a case for a second term in office.

It is expected that both the local and international media operating in the country would place the spotlight on the State of the Nations Address to capture the points made by the President.

President Mahama will be expected give account of the power crisis, the performance of the various sectors of the economy and international bilateral and multilateral corporations. He is also expected to speak on the growth prospects of the country, vis-a-vis the current fiscal discipline going into an election and the revised fiscal projections for this year owing to falling price of crude oil on the international market.

A few months ago, he explained that his next administration will focus on empowering Ghanaians economically, with his “money in the pocket” explanation.

According to government officials, having successfully stabilized the Ghanaian economy and solved the energy crisis, one of the most debilitating phenomenon that had engulfed the country for a couple of years now, it is time for a boost in business activities which have received a reprieve from the solved energy situation. This is expected to create several jobs while the spin-off effects of the stabilized economy are further expected to empower residents in the country.

Even though political campaigning has not be officially endorsed by the Electoral Commission (EC), the President’s address would likely set the agenda of how the campaign rhetoric of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) would look like.
Already, available data indicates that a bulk of the manifesto promises made by the NDC led by President Mahama, have been achieved with a few more left to be tackled before the close of this year.

Government officials have hinted that the address on Thursday will highlight the massive infrastructural projects embarked on by the NDC in the past eight years of both the John Atta Mills and the John Mahama administration.

These projects have dwarfed the preceding administration of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and may be used as President Mahama’s biggest selling point as he seeks a second term mandate.
GhanapoliticsOnline.Com

Some analysts have estimated that President Mahama stands a better chance of retaining the presidency than his main contender from the main opposition NPP, Nana Akufo Addo, who has failed twice to beat the NDC at the polls.

Indeed, President Mahama in 2012, needed barely 3 months in his Presidential campaign (shortly after he became the de facto flagbearer of the ruling NDC following the sudden death of the then sitting President, John Evans Atta-Mills).

This time, President Mahama will have the full benefit of an extended campaign period and would have proven economic record to show for it.

Probably realizing this, the NPP has tried without success to give President Mahama a corruption tag. All allegations of his complicity in corruption acts within his administration have been proven to be isolated cases which he has personally ordered to be thoroughly investigated.

Also, the latest line of attack of the NPP against President Mahama’s second term bid is to allege that the value of all the infrastructural projects undertaken by the NDC administration had been over-bloated with the excess cash used to line the pockets of individuals in government. Both Akufo Addo and his running-mate, Dr. Mahmud Bawumia are at the forefront of this latest campaign.
However, calls by government officials for them to substantiate these allegations with evidence have not been fulfilled.
Source: The Republic
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