General News of Wednesday, 22 June 2016
Source: Graphic.com.gh
Dr. Henry Lartey – GCPP
The Presidential Candidate of the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), Dr Henry Herbert Lartey, has called on Ghanaians to ignore calls by some members of the opposition parties on President John Dramani Mahama to step down.
His call comes in the wake of numerous suggestions from the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) that the president should resign from his position following a Ford Expedition gift given to him by a Burkinabe contractor.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic after addressing the GCPP’s 20th-anniversary celebration in Kumasi over the weekend, Dr Lartey said; “Suggestions that the president should step down are tactics to tarnish his image.”
He added that the suggestions of resignation which he termed “attacks” were ploys used by his colleague members from the opposition to score political points to turn the attention of Ghanaians from the work the President and his National Democratic Congress (NDC) government were doing.
To him, President Mahama did not err by accepting the gift since it was not in contravention of any law or regulations of the state and urged those mounting pressure on the President to step down to revisit their suggestions.
He was of the opinion that Ghanaians were the people who would go to the polls and so whether President Mahama was right or wrong for accepting the gift should be left for them to make their own “fair judgement”.
Dr Lartey blamed colleague members of the opposition for not explaining the controversies surrounding the President’s gift by using the 1992 Constitution but were interested in throwing dust into the eyes of Ghanaians.
He said campaigning on what a political party could do for the people of Ghana was more important than heaping attacks on the president and calling for his resignation.
He commended President Mahama for the revamping of the Komenda Sugar Factory and urged all Ghanaians to support the domestication as the only policy that could save and transform Ghana.
He said he had visited the Komenda Sugar Factory and realised that the GCPP, when voted into power, could bring more factories to support development.
“The GCPP had put President Mahama on the scale, and he weighs no less to be guilty of accepting gifts. What is important is that the GCPP remains the only strong opposition party to contest the NDC in the upcoming November election,” he stated.