Personal Assistant to former President John Mahama, Joyce Bawa Mogtari has challenged Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia over his deafening silence on the e-levy debate, having projected himself as the digital face of the Akufo Addo administration.
In a Facebook post, Mrs. Mogtari, wondered why Dr. Bawumia has refused to make his position known on the obnoxious tax which his government is intransigently trying to foist on Ghanaians even though the tax is being rejected by the people.
“…why has the Vice President (VP) gone stone silent on the unrepentant position of his government and economic management team to impose the levy. This is someone who told us that any kind of tax, especially taxing MoMo, is wicked and will not happen under President Akufo-Addo,” Mahama’s spokesperson said.
“Mr. VP, where is the money you saw as Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana? Where is the exchange rate you arrested? Where is the wise economic management you promised? And, oh! Like you yourself intimated, we don’t even remember who the members of your economic management team who have brought us to this sorry point are. Are you actually still in government?” Bawah Mogtari quizzed.
There is a background to Mrs. Bawa Mogtari’s clarion call on Dr. Bawumia to speak. When Bawumia’s party, the NPP was in position, he was a loud voice who had promised that if the NPP was elected into office it would not tax Ghanaians.
Madam Joyce Bawa Mogtari pulled up an old tweet from the vice president about taxation under the NDC regime – “NDC has resorted to increasing taxes under the economic difficulties they created. An NPP government will do differently.” She added that “Hopefully Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia will speak out!!”
Bawumia who had consistently misinformed Ghanaians, including claiming that the AfDB had blacklisted Ghana had also been the one who had made it his business to brand then President Mahama as incompetent.
As part of the desperate spinning for power, Bawumia had also claimed that inflation figures by the Ghana Statistical Service had been cooked and that there was money at the Bank of Ghana and therefore Ghana did not need to borrow.
Following the NPP winning power in 2017, Dr. Bawumia’s position as Vice President automatically put him in charge of the government’s economic management team. Critics say he has made a complete mess of the economy with Ghana’s debt off to a point where investors are refusing to lend to Ghana.
But after running the economy into a mess, Dr. Bawumia has adopted a shrewd escapist tactic – championing digitalization rather than speaking on the economy.