[ 2011-12-07 ]

Dr. Bawumia is the best choice! It’s that simple
To have a matured, experienced, proven political
leader like Nana Akufo-Addo as presidential
candidate, and a young energetic, handsome and
affable international technocrat like Dr. Mahamadu
Bawumia as running mate, to lead the NPP to the
2012 presidential election, is one “Dream Team”
any political party desirous of enhancing the well
being of our country, will be envious of.

A few names have been put forward as potentials to
partner Nana Addo in the 2012 elections. They
include Deputy General Manager of Metro TV Alhaji
Alhassan Haruna, Deputy Minority Leader and NPP MP
for Lawra/Nandom Ambrose Derry, and international
economic consultant and running mate to Nana Addo
in the 2008 elections, Dr. Mahamadu Bawumiah.
Without a doubt, Hon. Ambrose Derry and Dr.
Bawumia stand tall as favourites but, for me, Dr.
Bawumia stands tallest

The marketability of the running mate should be an
important deciding factor when Nana Addo decides
to name his 2012 partner. Hon. Ambrose Derry is a
fine gentleman and politician. He demonstrated his
political astuteness when in 2008, he unseated
then incumbent MP and now Minister for the
Interior, Hon. Benjamin Kunbuor to win the
Lawra/Nandom seat for the NPP. Indeed it was a
close fight between the two. Hon. Derry won with
47.6% of the valid votes cast with Hon. Kunbuor
winning 43.2%, a close call no doubt. For this
reason I believe Hon. Derry will do his Party and
constituents a lot of good if he concentrates on
consolidating his position in the constituency. He
has done a wonderful job as the honourable
parliamentary representative for the people of
Lawra/Nandom and I believe he is in a better
position to woo more votes to the NPP than any
other candidate the party will present. He knows
best, the strategy he adapted to beat Hon.
Kunbuor.

Dr. Bawumia on the other hand has been marketed in
all the constituencies of the country. In the
run-up to the 2008 elections, everywhere one went
and saw the picture of Nana Addo, one was likely
to see the picture of Dr. Bawumia; and everywhere
Nana Addo went to spread his campaign message, one
was likely to see Dr. Bawumia by his side. People
outside Lawra Nandom who know Nana Addo are more
likely to know Dr. Bawumia than Hon. Ambrose Derry
or any of the other names that are being thrown at
Nana and the NPP. This is an edge Dr. Bawumia has
over the other potentials, and we cannot overlook
it; we simply cannot.

Surely, you have not forgotten that day in the
life of the former Ashanti Regional Minister, that
day he will never forget. That was the day Kofi
Opoku-Manu, on his rounds to some selected schools
to fraternize with the pupils on their first day
at school, asked a class to tell him who the
president of Ghana is. And hurriedly, an
enthusiastic pupil put up his hand just as we all
did in class during our primary school days, when
we were very sure of the correct answer to a
teacher’s question. So, when that pupil raised his
hand to answer a question from not less a person,
but the minister of the whole Ashanti region, he
(pupil) must have definitely been very much
convinced about the correctness of his answer.
Now, when that bold pupil finally provided his
answer for the name of the president, the jaws of
the minister and his entire team dropped to their
chests in complete amazement when Nana Addo
Dankwah Akufo-Addo was mentioned as the current
president of the Republic of Ghana. Logically one
can say that if the minister had asked for the
name of the vice-president, the said pupil would
most likely have mentioned the name “Dr. Mahamadu
Bawumia” over the others.

Dr. Bawumia brings on board what I like to term
“the Balancing factor”. Nana Addo is an elderly
internationally respected political leader. He
versed in the laws of the country, and his immense
desire to champion democratic governance and
respect for fundamental human rights can not be
contended. Dr. Bawumia is an economist of
international repute. He has worked not only in
Ghana, but in various parts of the world and I can
bet you John Dramani Mahama will grow green with
envy when he reads his successor’s professional
profile.

As head of the Monetary Policy and Financial
Stability Department, Dr. Bawumia implemented the
analytical framework that guides monetary policy
and the workings of the Monetary Policy Committee
at the Bank of Ghana. The inflation targeting
framework established was successful in reducing
inflation from over 40% in 2000 to 10.2 % by 2007.
He was a member of the Government Team to
negotiate the Millennium Challenge Account Compact
with the US Government. He was responsible for
drafting the financial sector component of the MCA
Compact. The MCA Compact yielded financing for
$547 million of projects. He was also a member of
the Government Technical Team on the Deregulation
of the Petroleum Sector. As Chairman of the
Capital Markets Committee, he was responsible for
the strategy for accessing the international
capital markets with a debut $750 million dollars,
which was four times oversubscribed. He was part
of the team that designed and implemented the
successful redenomination of the cedi which was
hailed globally. Dr. Bawumia played a key role in
the design and implementation of the e-zwich
common platform for all banks, savings and loans
companies and rural banks. This common platform
has resulted in inter-operability across different
financial institutions. The first nationwide
technologically-driven platform for monetary
transactions across the country, the e-zwich has
put Ghana on the map as a world leader in the
application of biometric smartcard technology for
banking the unbanked.

Fellow Ghanaians, our economy is in shambles and
all the social intervention policies the Kufuor
administration introduced have either remained the
way they are, or are failing. The free school
uniform for our kids has been turned into a
one-size fits all attire where the ‘Oye adie yie”
has to stand by for emergency alteration,
hen-coop-like structures are being built at
astronomical cost, under the guise of eradicating
schools under trees. You see, when you have a
vice-president versed in public relations that is
what he will bring to the presidency: public
relation gimmicks.

Vice-President John Dramani Mahama was very
instrumental in bringing the all famous STX deal
to Ghana. The deal, if it had gone through would
have provided housing, not only to members of the
security outfit, but the ordinary Ghanaian as
well. The deal was made under the umbrella, with a
lot of fanfare and all sorts of PR tricks, to of
course shore up the image of the NDC. Only
recently, after the Minister of Works and Housing
Alban Bagbin had led media men to a snake, rabbit
and grasscutter farm around Dodowa, ostensibly to
show them work progressing on the STX deal, we
heard that he was involved in some serious blows
with vice-president Mahama. Who the winner was, I
cannot tell. The vice president is very unhappy
with the way the STX deal is going. He knows
things are not going well. However, because he is
not versed in the economics and economic
legalities of the whole deal, he does not know how
to address the matter. Meanwhile his boss
President Mills has run away to chill somewhere
after failing to achieve less than one-tenth of
his action year promises. If our vice-president
were an astute international economist like Dr.
Mahamadu Bawumiah, we would definitely have gotten
a better deal, and members of our security
agencies would be well housed by now.

As far as I can tell, the vice-president has
always been the chairman of the Economic
Management Team. If what Egya Atta brought to
Ghanaians when he held that position, and what
John Mahama is doing to us now, is anything to go
by, then we can forecast how things are going to
be like without Dr. Bawumia as vice-president. The
man knows the economic terrain like the back of
his hands and if we are desirous of an economic
brain to complement the astute leadership of Nana
Addo, then Dr. Bawumia is our man.

Let us not take lightly, the family and religious
background of Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia. Dr. Bawumia’s
father, the distinguished Alhaji Mumuni Bawumia,
was a teacher, lawyer and veteran politician who
devoted virtually all his life to public service.
The late Alhaji Mumuni Bawumia was a Mamprugu
Royal and Paramount Chief of the Kperiga
Traditional Area at the time of his passing in
September 2002. He was a founding member of the
Northern Peoples’ Party alongside such political
stalwarts as Chief S. D. Dombo, Yakubu Tali, the
Tolon Naa, and J. A. Braimah, Kabachewura. The
Northern People’s Party, together with the
National Liberation Movement and other opposition
political parties later metamorphosed into the
United Party.

Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia is a devout Muslim, an
important factor that cannot be wished away. The
NPP unlike its opponent the NDC has always fielded
a northern Muslim as its running mate. With the
fatwa declared by Fiifi Kwetey that a Muslim can
never be President of Ghana, the declaration by
Sam Pee Yalley that the President should not
reside near the people of Nima, and the SADA con
that the NDC led by vice-president Mahama applied
on our brothers and sisters up north, presenting a
person like Dr. Bawumiah to our kith and kin up
north can only be described briefly, as most
appropriate.

I believe that Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo should
maintain Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia as his running mate
because, as pollster Ben Ephson put it, “he lost
not because of Bawumia but out of the party’s own
complacency that they will win by all means”. Nana
must maintain Bawumiah because he has been
marketed enough and there is no mud to throw at
him again. Any mud that will be thrown at him has
been thrown already.

Indeed I am of the candid opinion that it will be
politically inept on the part of Nana Addo to
choose any other, apart from Dr. Mahamadu
Bawumiah. He is the beeest man to partner Nana
Akufo-Addo in 2012; it’s that simple.

Source - Francis A. Agbemenya

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