NDC has a mindset of impoverishing people – Mustapha Hamid

The spokesman for the flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party, Mustapha Hamid, has accused the National Democratic Congress (NDC) of deliberately impoverishing Ghanaians so as to buy their vote during election.

He also accused President John Mahama of blatantly distributing goodies and bribing voters to buy their votes on Newsfile Saturday.

“The NDC has a certain mindset that says impoverish the people, do not empower the people, don’t make them capable of fending for themselves and during elections, you can come and put GHC20 note in matches box and then you go around and distribute them…and people can vote for you.

“And so the president is going around blatantly distributing goodies and bribing voters to actually vote for him.

“He is doing so openly and if you want unapologetically, and I think that it is not good. A president ought to be the person who leads the ethical moral crusade,” Mr Hamid said.

His comments follow president Mahama’s distribution of outboard motors to fishermen in the Western Region.

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The president has come in for criticism from the Ghana Integrity Initiative, the local chapter of Transparency International and the Centre for Democratic Development for vote buying.

But a member of the NDC legal team, Mr Abraham Amaliba, said defended the distribution of the outboard motors, saying it was contained in the NDC’s 2012 campaign pledge.

According to him, the distribution is not new, wondering why NPP is making issues out of it.

"He [President Mahama] has not told them [beneficiaries of the outboard motors] that these are NDC sponsored items.

"It is didn't come from his month. All that he did was to present or distribute these outboard motors which were not even in party colours," Mr Amaliba responded on Newsfile.