Why NDC Lost Part 1

Why the NDC lost the Election. Since the declaration of the 2016 election results, I have heard so many arguments about why the sitting president and the ruling government lost the election. Now I will explain why the NDC was trounced at the pools. The meat of the problem is the Economy, Yes the economy. It doesn’t lie, the party embarked on this massive infrastructure which is good except that it was financed with debt. With our external debt pilling up we had to run to the IMF which imposed their favorite tool on us, austerity – increase revenue through tax and other means, full cost recovery for public utilities, reduce spending including freeze on public sector employment etc. Government was also borrowing locally through the issuance of treasury bills and banks were rather comfortable with the T-Bill rate they were not interested in taking any risk by lending to businesses except to those sectors that could turn such loans around quickly unfortunately these sectors are the import sectors. So things that could have been produced locally end up being imported. So very few jobs were created if any at all. In an attempt to reduce expenditure, promoted nurses and teachers were not being paid their due, if it finally comes mostly after one year, they are paid three months. Plus, the freeze on employment of newly trained nurses and teachers. To cap it the government decided to abolish the allowances paid to trainee teachers and nurses. Some of these students settled for these institutions because they assumed that employment is guaranteed for them after competition. So if you are a student in these institutions, you are denied your allowance and you chance of getting employment after completing is reducing by the day, so if someone comes promising to restore your allowance and ensure employment for you, what would you do? The NDC lost that constituency plus their parents and siblings. Hundreds of thousands of young professionals are being churned out of both the public and private institutions with no job openings to absorb them. These are people with high hopes. Businesses were being overtaxed in addition to their inability to get affordable credit, there was no way they could grow and create jobs. Throw in the high profile corruption scandals such as the bus branding, Woyome, GYEEDA SADA which the NPP hyped as much as they could and you have a fertile ground for the NPP to plant their change message. In addition to all these the party decided to run a flamboyant campaign which rather angered most of the youth. Of course with only one message which is the infrastructure, it was more convenient to spend more money to propagate their message which they had very little to begin with. It was therefore not surprising that the second defacto message then became the attack on the NPP’s candidate. Running an economy is balancing game more like dealing with a hydra headed monster, if you focus on one you will be killed by the others and that is what happened to the NDC. I will pause hear, but I would be back to explain why the NPP did not win but rather it was the NDC that lost, watch out.