The newly elected General-Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress, Fifi Fiavi Kwetey, has suggested that presidential hopefuls who poll less than 2 percent of the total votes cast during primaries must be penalized.
He said organizing a congress is a serious and expensive business and politicians who do not make any serious impact during the election should be penalized for wasting the resources of the party and delegates.
Responding to a question on Point of View on Citi TV on Monday, December 19, on whether business magnate and former Finance Minister, Dr. Kwabena Duffuor stands a chance against John Dramani Mahama in next year’s presidential primaries, Mr Kwetey said people must be encouraged to contest in any election, but they must know they have what it takes to make an impact in order not to waste anybody’s time.
“John Mahama himself knows that it shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion, as a competitor, I am sure he is ready to convince the delegates that he is still the best choice for the party. But for me the only thing that I say all the time is that it is a complete tragedy for a serious politician to invest time, money, resources, invest psychological energy and go and get 2 percent or 3 percent, for me that tells me that you are a complete disaster.
“If you can be that clueless not to know that you have no weight at all…in fact I think that there should be a system where people like that are actually penalized for wasting everybody’s time. It is not about suppressing people, it is about not allowing people to waste everybody’s time.”
Mr Kwetey also described the current government officials as a toxic combination of incompetent and corrupt officials individuals who have destroyed the moral fibre of the country.
“We have spoken about the complete deception of using COVID-19 as if COVID-19 did not happen or Russia, Ukraine did not happen in any part of the world. If you look at what was happening in these countries viz-a-viz what was happening in Ghana, you can see that this is a government that is massively deceiving the people and finding excuses.”
“Look at where they have taken our debt to. Have they fixed dumsor? Countries have faced COVID-19 but do they not have a stronger economy? So what is this excuse about COVID-19? Have they faced the Single Spine Salary that we had to face? These are plain excuses by a bunch of toxic and incompetent people who are corrupt to the core. That is what we have”.
