NPP officially outdoors 2012 Manifesto

The main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) on Wednesday became the second political party contesting Election 2012 to officially launch its manifesto after the Convention Peoples Party.

Highlights of the manifesto anchored on: a free, fair and prosperous society, challenging Ghanaians to either move forward with the NPP or, according to the party, stay with the failed policies of the ruling National Democratic Congress.

According to Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, NPP’s flag bearer for Election 2012, the NPP had been in the forefront of Ghana’s development and transformation agenda.

“Our record of achievement during our time in government points to the fact that we know how to bring prosperity to Ghana and also make our motto of development in freedom, a reality for all.

“Our education policy is the key to both individual and national development, and will be a priority of my presidency. I pledge to extend free education to the Senior High School level, build public universities in regions without any and raise the quality of education at all levels with more and better facilities, teaching and equipment.

“Our education system will equip our people for the jobs of the future.Working in partnership with the private sector, we will make new markets for Ghanaian products and services.

“We will give new impetus to value-addition. These will deliver the jobs that the teeming youth of the country are yearning for,”he said.

Nana Addo maintained that the party was fully committed to the ECOWAS integration project, as Ghana had the potential to be at the centre of economic activities for the vast regional market.

The party, according to him, would expand health facilities and increase the training of health workers.

Nana Addo said: “Our priority is to train our medical professionals locally; modernise agriculture and ensure that we double the numbers of farmers who have access to farming inputs.

“I believe in Ghana’s destiny and potential. Today, we can again lead our continent as we did over fifty years ago, showing the world a successful first-world black nation. We have a responsibility to ourselves and to future generations to ensure we do not continue to compromise our future.

“I believe in Ghana and in our ability to continue moving forward to a brighter future in which we will all share in December so that together we can realise our dream of a modern Ghana.

“God did not put us on this rich land to be poor. It is bad leadership that makes us poor. So let us change now and move Ghana forward.

Mr Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, NPP National Chairman, noted that out of the 55 years of Ghana’s indepenence, the party and its tradition had been in power for over ten years.

Yet, within that short period Ghanaians were witnesses to the competent and visionary leadership of a party that puts the well-being of the Ghanaian above all else.

“The eight years rule of the NPP from 2001 to 2008 brought relief, dignity, hope and promise to many of our people. Sadly, that is not the case today. We live in desperate and trying times, with hope replaced by despair, and promise by helplessness, desolation and hardships.

According to the NPP Chairman, over the past three years, Ghana had retrogressed under an administration that allegedly lacked purpose.

“Leadership is weak, the economy backsliding, the cost of living rising at an unbearable rate, the standard of education falling, healthcare collapsing and unprecedented corruption being the order of the day.

“Unless this retrogression is halted and transformation firmly implemented we risk condemning the youth of this country to a dangerously jobless, hopeless, and impoverished future.”

“Mr Obetsebi Lamptey described the past four years as wasted stressing that Ghanaians  deserved much better. But, on December 7, the people will once again have the power to rescue Ghana and entrust the responsibility of moving Ghana and Ghanaians forward together into the hands of those they can trust to deliver: the NPP.

“Our manifesto contains the vision that our party, under the purposeful and competent leadership of Nana Akufo-Addo, had prepared itself to deliver as your government. They had the transformation dream.

“Nana Akufo-Addo and his team have the transformation plan to bring that dream to reality,” the NPP Chairman said.

Source: GNA