NPP can't be trusted - Fifi Kwetey

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) cannot be trusted to govern the nation because of its dishonesty, insincerity and hypocrisy, Transport Minister Fifi Kwetey has said.

Mr Kwetey, who was speaking at the second edition of the ‘Setting the Records Straight’ forum of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) at the party’s headquarters in Accra on Tuesday October 11, said: “The hypocrisy of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo tradition over the last few decades cannot be matched.”

According to him, even though the NPP claimed to believe in multi-party democracy, “they openly declared that they will stop at nothing to use the Fast Track courts to bring about the decimation of the NDC”.

He said this was in line with what its forebears succeeded in doing to Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party (CPP).

Mr Kwetey explained that even though the NPP claimed “they hated military intervention, they were the first to attempt a military coup as far back as 1958, a year after independence”, adding: “To date, they still believe in the 1966 coup, a coup in which they were heavily involved.”

He added that the party did not also have a problem asking “John Agyekum Kufour to take a position in the PNDC military regime in 1982”.

In his view, the NPP cannot hold on to the claim of believing in human rights “when they were procuring and throwing bombs in the early ’60s which killed and maimed many innocent children and women in the process, in a desperate bid to take power from Dr Kwame Nkrumah”.

He accused the NPP of believing in the ‘all-die-be-die’ mantra which, he said, “has been demonstrated in the use of acid and all manner of violence to achieve their aim”.

Mr Kwetey was surprised the NPP hailed then Electoral Commission (EC) boss, Dr Afari Gyan “when the results went their way in 2000 and 2004 but he became a demon when they suffered back-to-back losses in 2004 and 2008”.

For him, it was also hypocritical on the part of the NPP to hail the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) during the party’s tenure in office but chastised the same institution when they had gone into opposition. “They called into question their competence and credibility,” he noted.

He further indicated that the NPP had chastised former President Jerry John Rawlings, describing him “as an embodiment of evil” but from 2009 when misunderstandings occurred between former Presidents Rawlings and John Atta Mills, “Mr Rawlings suddenly became a darling of the NPP”.

Mr Kwetey said the NPP treated the 1992 Constitution with disdain, claiming “it was the work of chop bar operators and other lesser humans but soon after that, they became the experts and defenders of the same constitution which they cling onto today like a World Cup trophy”.

For him, these and many more instances in the past betray the NPP and expose the party as one which engages in double standards, making it a party without credibility.