‘We cannot visit the sins of the fathers on their children’ – Kofi Bentil defends Bawumia

Kofi Bentil, a proponent of the campaign to make Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia president of the country from January 2025, has advanced a supposition to the effect that the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party cannot be blamed for the shortfalls of the Akufo-Addo administration.

Kofi Bentil surmised on Newsfile on JoyNews that while the record of the Akufo-Addo government especially in their second term has been catastrophic, Dr Bawumia cannot be held liable as the buck ultimately stops with the president.

He intimated that compared to John Mahama, the vice president is a more credible candidate who should be given the nod in December 2024.

Kofi Bentil noted that It will be difficult for Bawumia to extricate himself from the sins of the Akufo-Addo government but believes that he is the best option for Ghana.

“As per the corruption perception index, this government has been more corrupt than Mahama and that’s disappointing and terrible but that is why this government is going away. If this was their second term, I would have voted them away because I would have voted for Nana Addo. By the design in our constitution, this government are going away.

“The biggest baggage of Bawumia is this government. He has to pay for the sins of this government and he is part of the government. One of the things I want to which I have told Bawumia is that I don’t want to see any key members of this government in his team. If he does that I will criticize him. We cannot visit the sins of the fathers on their children especially when there is evidence that we could be making a mistake,” he said.

Dr Bawumia has dominated the news following his maiden major address as presidential aspirant of the NPP.

In his speech delivered at the UPSA on February 10, 2024, Bawumia highlighted major achievements of the government and announced plans to abolish some taxes.

“Inflation has declined from 54% in January to 23% in December 2023. Economic growth is rebounding, spending is under control with the fiscal deficit as a percentage of GDP has declined from 10.8% in 2020 to 4.2% in 2023. The debt to GDP ratio, after increasing from 61.2% in 2019 to 76.6% in 2021 has declined to 66.4% in 2023. And exchange rate depreciation has also slowed down sharply since February 2023, Whereas the exchange rate depreciated by 30% in 2022, between February and December 2023, it only depreciated by 9%.”

“Following COVID-19 and the global slowdown, Ghana’s GDP growth declined to an average of 4.9% between 2017 and 2022. What is remarkable about this performance is that notwithstanding the global economic crisis from COVI-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war, economic growth under our government is still stronger on average than under the 2013-2016 era preceding our coming into office.”