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1. This budget statement came at a time when Ghanaians are in darkness, when water shortages are widespread, where unemployment is rife, and where general cost of living is rising. The budget statement should have addressed these challenges head on, but it didn’t.
2. Ghana’s total debt is up from GHC9.5 billion in January 2009 to GHC33.5 billion now. Additionally, the NDC government has crude oil proceeds which its predecessor governments did not have. Additionally again, the NDC government has been getting windfall benefit from the exports of gold, cocoa and crude oil because of the near-record high levels. But what do we have to show for it all?

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The frustrations of Ghanaians keep growing by the day at the inability of elected officials to show leadership in the handling of the energy crisis that currently engulfs the entire space of Ghana. From children and schools that need light for their studies at night, the hospital laboratories and theatres needing reliable power to save lives, the cottage and large scale factories in the villages and cities respectively that need reliable and affordable power to sustainably remain competitive with the global trends, Ghanaians are simply tired of the regular excuses and description of age old problems by policy makers without actions to resolving them.

And the Danquah Institute fully identifies with the plight of these ordinary Ghanaians, who have to continuously bear with this unbearable circumstance without the benefit of any reasonable hope of a lasting solution to the current energy crisis situation from its elected leaders, enabled by their mandate to solve these problems on their behalf.

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The international community, generally, endorsed Ghana’s 2012 elections as  “free and fair.” Ghana, the continent’s star of democracy, had done it once again for Africa. John Mahama, the declared winner, was duly sworn in without any violent protests on January 7, 2013.

But, the country’s biggest opposition party filed a petition in Ghana’s supreme court, (the first of its kind in the country’s history), challenging the presidential results.

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Four months before the 2012 general elections in Ghana, the President and ruling party candidate for the December polls, John Atta Mills, passed away. At the time, the incumbent was down in the polls and his Vice President, John Mahama, who was embroiled in a series of multi-million dollar corruption scandals, was sworn in as President and became the ruling party’s presidential candidate.

Ghana had a newly compiled voters’ list compiled earlier in 2012, using biometric technology, to help prevent multiple registrations and avoid repeat voting and impersonation, two of the major problems with previous elections. Accordingly, a new law was passed, which effectively meant: “No Verification, No Vote”. Voters were distributed across 275 constituencies made up of 26,002 polling stations.