Stay off politics on economy – Mahama told

Member of Parliament for Mpraeso Constituency Seth Kwame Acheampong has admonished former president John Dramani Mahama to better stay off talking about the economy. The New Patriotic Party (NPP) MP says he is advising him as a senior brother. This advice comes in the wake of the former president’s mockery of Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia in a tweet over the week. In the tweet, Ghana’s fourth president in the Fourth Republic posted a video of Dr Bawumia lashing out at the then National Democratic Congress (NDC) government over the depreciation of the domestic currency, Cedi, to the US Dollar. READ: Mahama mocks Bawumia over Cedi depreciation: ‘Weak fundamentals?’ But Mr Acheampong appeared frustrated by Mr Mahama’s gesture, saying the economy was brought to its knees in the last quarter of 2012, when he was president. Speaking on TV3’s New Day on Saturday, the Mpraeso MP said Ghana overspent its budget by more than GH¢8 billion in the lead-up to the elections that year. According to him, Ghana has since not recovered and the current government has had to continue servicing some of the debt and loans incurred during that period. ‘Bawumia was Bible & Quran’ But Mr Mahama’s Campaign Coordinator in the 2016 elections, Kofi Adams, who was also a panelist on the programme, disagreed with the MP. He said Dr Bawumia was considered a Bible and a Quran by the NPP family and became an authority on any issue on the economy. Mr Adams, who is NDC’s National Organiser, said what Mr Mahama sought to do on Twitter was a harmless posting of the old video, leaving Ghanaians to judge. He recalled how the Minister of Finance had gone to Parliament earlier this year to tout the resilience of the economy under the Akufo-Addo government. With the Cedi depreciating, Mr Adams insinuated, Ghanaians have to look at the government with the same lens as Dr Bawumia did: a matter of weak fundamentals. By Emmanuel Kwame Amoh|editors.3news.com|Ghana Follow @kwame_amoh