As the year draws to a close, it is only appropriate that we look back at the previous twelve months and evaluate what we accomplished as a nation while looking ahead to what we can do in the next twelve months to make our lives better.
2018 wasn’t exactly a blissful year, politically speaking; we were treated to bizarre political theatrics by the two big political organizations, the NPP and the NDC.
Both parties opportunistic as ever, battled it out for political supremacy, with charges and accusations of incompetence, nepotism, corruption and sabotage being thrown around with reckless abandon.
It will not be out of place to state that 2018 was a particularly difficult year for the ruling New Patriotic Party. It struggled to meet numerous public expectations, but did not exactly help itself with the enactment of policies that either did not go far enough or were simply not feasible.
In addition, it paid lip service to corruption and graft while sweeping many charges of financial malfeasance by some of its high ranking members under the rug.
The net effect of these failures is the sowing of doubts in the minds of Ghanaians about the NPP’s competency and ability to govern.
But to millions of NPP supporters, the President Mr. Nana Akuffo Addo, has done a remarkable good job in the face of immense difficulties.
They argue that he has delivered on the many promises he made during the heated election campaign in 2016 and gleefully point to some key policy enactment such as the troubled Free Education Program as a case in point.
And, they argue further that the President was handed a terrible economy by the erstwhile Mahama administration and that he deserves boatloads of praises for doing all within his power and with the little available resources on hand, to make life better for everybody.
On its part the National Democratic Congress has played its role as the main opposition party competently, albeit with a mixture of hypocrisy, gusto and bravado. It has kept the ruling NPP on its toes and challenged almost every consequential policy the government has trotted out.
But like any other opposition party, the NDC hasn’t shied away from exploiting the vulnerabilities of its rival to score political points. There were days when the NDC could have worked across the aisle with the NPP to find common solutions to our problems, but it remained inflexible and stubbornly unreceptive to anything the NPP proposed.
For their part, Ghanaians would rather 2018 isn’t mentioned at all for the simple reason that it did not minimize their financial headaches as was promised by the ruling NPP.
Times are still hard, jobs are scarce and money is tight. But through it all, Ghanaians have displayed a resiliency that defies description. Another group of aggrieved people would certainly have risen up in upheaval.
Entering the new year, Ghanaians are hoping that their financial and economic circumstances will improve through the passage of sound and prudent policies, that the ruling NPP will vigorously fight corruption as the President promised and that the big political parties will find common ground in their quest for solutions to the nation’s problems.
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