Arrogant Akufo-Addo Rejected Calls For National Dialogue On The economy — Mahama

Former President John Mahama has said the government led by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo ignored his advice to rally citizens in efforts to surmount the economic challenges facing the country.

Earlier, Mahama said in circumstances such as the current economic crisis, the support of everyone was important.

He stated that in order for the government to get the needed support to bring the economy back on track, it had to be transparent about the underlying issues.

Following the inclusion of pensioners in the domestic debt exchange programme which saw the former Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo being affected, Mahama said when the country was running into an economic ditch, he made several calls for a dialogue and national consensus on an economic programme.

He said the arrogance and intransigence of Nana Addo and the incompetence of Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta and the Economic Management Team have led the country to this state.

In a Facebook post, Mahama said we could have forged a broad non-partisan consensus on the IMF bailout and accompanying debt restructuring programme adding that it’s too late for the country to come out of the economic mess.

Sophia Akuffo said it is very insensitive on the part of the NPP administration to include the elderly in the debt exchange programme.

Speaking to the press after she joined some of the pensioners picketing at the Ministry of Finance, she said: “I find this wicked; I find it disrespectful; I find it unlawful; I find it totally wrong. Period. Because you don’t solve your problems by sacrificing your age. That’s the last thing you should do especially when we don’t have any services that are specially geared at the comfort and the relief of the aged.”

She stated that while she is not going to be affected by the government’s DDEP, she finds it wicked for the government to sacrifice the profits of retirees – people who have sacrificed for Ghana, just so that it is able to solve its own problems in managing the economy.