Convention People’s Party (CPP) is demanding an outright and an unequivocal cancelation of the Power Distribution Services (PDS) Ltd concession agreement.
The case of the PDS is a symptom of Ghana losing its sovereignty since the infamous February 24, 1966 coup d’etat that ousted the first Republican government.
It indicated that Ghana is capable of managing the energy sector from generation, distribution to the management of revenue mobilization.
A statement from the CPP and signed by acting General Secretary, James Kwabena Bomfeh Jnr, charged the Akufo-Addo administration to overcome its timidity on the termination and demand renegotiation of the whole Millennium Challenge Authority (MCA) compact on the energy sector.
“It is abundantly clear from the letter under the hand of the Honourable Finance Minister that while Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led government has mustered some courage to purport to ‘cancel’ the PDS deal, they are timid to renegotiate the whole MCA compact on the energy sector to insist on ECG operating as a State asset without private sector involvement.”
“We should open the ECG Board to a Democratic Public Management if the current Board structure is failing to meet the demands of transparency,” the statement said.
Though the CPP applauded the Akufo-Addo administration for the intent to terminate the deal, it says the government should listen to reason and wise counsel from Ghanaians and cancel the stinking deal.
“It stinks terribly,” Kwabena Bomfeh said and stressed that Ghana is capable of managing the energy sector.
He argued that true to the views of Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia when was the NPP running mate, Ghana has all the resources at home to embark on its own development initiatives.
ALSO READ : CPP elects officers in 14 regions
He said, “Our understanding then and now, was and is that we may not have the cash but we have a huge state bargaining power in addition to vast natural resource endowments not yet fully discovered, which could be leveraged to bring in investment under ‘quid pro quo’ terms as we did in the early days of the nation’s founding under the indomitable and unbeaten CPP led administration.”
“The CPP is ready and willing to offer knowledgeable, dedicated and courageous men and women if the Nana Akufo-Addo leadership is willing to cooperate and accept a genuine helping hand in the interest of the State in resolving this instant matter and any other governance issue.”
He argued that the essence of intelligence activities is pre-emptive rather than reactive or curative and charged the government to cast away the petty partisan cloak and appoint the right caliber of devoted, willing and sincere, hardworking and selfless citizens to superintend the sector.
History, he said, is replete with a preponderance of examples where divestiture or private sector participation in State Owned Corporations or Assets has proven to be a disaster.
He warned that divestiture is a trump tenet of the failed and ever-failing neoliberal economic module used by the Global North and their local lackeys and collaborators to always milk the sacred cow dry in the Global South.
