A political Scientist, Mr. Jonathan Okyere Asante has applauded the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for the giant strides it has made since birthing the Fourth Republic more than two decades ago.
Analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the NDC on the occasion of its 29th anniversary on Thursday on Power 97.9 FM, Mr. Asante, who has followed the activities of the two main political parties since 1992, stated the NDC has performed far better than the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
He told Dwaboase host Kwame Prince Minkah the achievements of the NDC were enormous and immeasurable in the political history of Ghana, citing the drafting of the constitution and the implementation of some key policies that are still useful to Ghanaians in recent times.
He indicated that NDC has played a very instrumental role in all sectors of the economy and mentioned Energy, Roads, Infrastructure in the health and other sectors, adding there is no way the NPP can compare its achievements to that of NDC.
In Energy, for instance, Mr. Asante noted the NDC made a huge investment in the energy sector, especially extending electricity to most parts of the country under the reign of the late JJ Rawlings.
He bemoaned President Kuffour’s inability to add more megawatts to the country’s power generation capacity thus bringing intermittent power outages which began in 2007 and inherited by the late Prof JEA Mills whose administration took steps to deal with the power situation.
Touching on infrastructure, Mr Asante said the numerous roads, affordable Houses, and modernized interchanges like Circle interchange,Tema interchange and Pokuase interchange were constructed under thetenure of former president John Dramani Mahama to help boost the economy of the country.
To him, the NPP can’t pride itself with any newly constructed interchange in the country.
Citing the contributions by both parties in the health sector, Mr. Asante stated that it took the visionary NDC to extend the mutual insurance scheme by the NPP to the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) which became a nationwide scheme to deal with the health needs of Ghanaians.
Mr. Asante further explained that workers who are enjoying the single spine salary structure should give credit to the NDC for dreaming and implementing it.