The Finance Minister might have forgotten that what he told a radio station soon after a post-budget statement presentation was inconsistent with the promise now President John Mahama made to Ghanaians.
Indeed he contradicted himself too when he turned round to say that victims of the banking sector cleanup do not deserve palliative intervention….sounds rich considering what he had touted on the campaign trail.
Now we are learning as Ghanaians that when it comes to campaign trail rhetoric the NDC as a party should not be taken serious regardless of whoever among them speaks to issues.
Talking about the banking sector cleanup whose unintended painful outcome affected employees and others the origin of the financial mess is traceable to the stewardship of the man now heading the apex bank, the Bank of Ghana.
Only hypocrites would want us to believe that a cleanup was unnecessary at the time government effected it.
Today the Finance Minister Dr. Ato Forson is saying in his post-budget chat that it is untenable to pay those who fingers were burnt during the cleanup. It was possible to make the promise during the campaign but unthinkable to do that today.
Even Menzgold victims were promised refund by President Mahama before he assumed power…no longer so now and what does that say about those in charge of affairs in the country today.
It is incomprehensible to say that the Akufo-Addo administration was insensitive to the plight of the victims of the financial sector cleanup when it announced mitigation through bonds.
At the time Dr. Ato Forson with propaganda blood flowing through his veins said the victims deserved payment of cash and not bonds. The sudden volte face after being in government for a little under a year sound instructive and interesting.
Today paying the victims for a country just coming out of a financial distress is ill-advised and the NDC government is nowhere thinking about this according to him.
Still not thinking about the wisdom in collapsing the distressed banks in response by the Akufo-Addo government at the time the Finance Minister said that government had no business collapsing the financial institutions.
So why are they not unfreezing the licences of the collapsed banks?
Dr. Kwabena Duffuor whose now defunct bank was knee-deep in the financial mess that afflicted the country was left off the hook following the submission of nolle prosequi by the Attorney General. Not only that…he and government have a deal of a refund of a 60 to 40 ratio.
When such realities occurred and persons like the Finance Minister talk the way he does without assigning an iota of credit to the former government for cleaning up the financial sector mess we can only endure the pain that such hypocrisy brings to bear upon us as a force majeure and pray for time to tell one day.
