Former President John Drammani Mahama has asked the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) a rhetorical question, whether they will throw a kenkey party as it was done when they led the country to exit the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

According to him, within just three weeks that the coronavirus wrecked the nation, a government that claimed it has created a robust economy, yet out of all the countries in the sub-region hit by the virus, Ghana was the first to run to the IMF for external support.

He said: “If we have one of the best economies, why within only three weeks our economy was on the verge of going on its knees. And we have eaten kenkey and celebrated leaving the IMF. We have quickly run back to the IMF. I don’t know whether we will eat kenkey and celebrate going back to the IMF to go and seek relief.”

Mr Mahama was responding to questions from his “Digital Conversation” streamed live on his Facebook page on April 30.

He was actually responding to a question on a comment he earlier made that Ghana’s economy is in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), which the ruling government felt it was out of place.

“Ghanaian economy is in the ICU. It is! We have other African countries to learn from. We said that our economy was so robust and was the fastest growing in Africa and all that. Ask yourself how many countries have run quickly to the IMF to go and look for relief,” he asked.

According to him, even before the outbreak of COVID-19, there were problems with the Ghanaian economy and had since been pointing out that the minister of finance was not painting the true picture of the economy to the people.

He accused the finance minister for putting a lots of the debts and arrears under the carpet by not adding them to the budget accounting.

He continues: “I have pointed this out several times. If your mother is died and you pretend she is not dead, when the body starts to be smelling, everybody will find it. And so when COVID came, the speed at which our economy already was in crisis, was alarming.

“Indeed, I have said the other time that one top government official said that with the kind of foreign reserves that we have, our economy can survive for three months without any external intervention if we are faced with a disaster. We were faced with a disaster for only three weeks and already we were seeking external intervention to keep the economy afloat.”

His biggest problem has to do with the inaction of government in this COVID-19 situation, adding that it is the only government that had received almost GHC8 billion within weeks of the pandemic, yet struggling to provide safety gears for health workers.

 Per his evaluation, the lockdown would have been better and effectively managed under his leadership by adopting utilities bills distribution channels to serve food to households.

“If you do a lockdown, one of the things you must have it right is your humanitarian intervention because you are basically asking people to stay at home and should not go out and engage in economic activity in order that they can earn an income to feed themselves.

“Unfortunately, government humanitarian intervention was a disaster. The whole system of food distribution was so poorly organised and indeed, that was one of the reasons I believe forced the president to lift the lockdown. Because if it had continued people would have faced the option between starving and/or coming out and taking their chance of the virus.”

By Bernice Bessey