[ 2017-04-06 ]

Former Defense Minister Dr Benjamin Kunbour

Many of us saw defeat coming – Kunbuor
Defense Minister under the Mahama-led
administration, Dr Benjamin Kunbour has revealed
that leading members of the National Democratic
Congress (NDC) saw signs of the defeat of the
party ahead of the 2016 presidential elections.

The former defense minister who admitted that the
defeat of the party in last year's general
elections was not a noble one said a lot of
factors, both external and internal, gave credence
to their suspicion.

“It was possible you could see that defeat was
coming because anyone who has been around from
1999/2000 could see a symmetry between the
developments that were taking place particularly a
year or a year and half in the round off to the
elections.

“I spent a bit of my quite time doing some
analysis and I must say at that time, I was a bit
frightened about the parallels and similarities of
1999 and 2000 which eventually led to our
electoral defeat at that time. So there was cause
for worry at that time,” he said on Gh One TV's
State of Affairs.

Elaborating what these factors were, Dr. Kunbour
intimated that graduate unemployment worsened, a
situation which led to the increase in membership
of the Ghana Unemployed Graduates Association.

“The external environment, you don’t always
control it. Externally, we had gone into an IMF
package which the consequences were of very high
level austerity. The austerity hit directly at our
constituency. There is no way that with the global
unemployment, particularly youth unemployment you
have in this country, that it will not become an
election issue. In the peculiar case of Ghana, I
saw the percentages of graduate unemployment reach
an astronomical level to the extent that an
association of unemployed graduates had to be
formed to articulate these concerns… and that
clearly mirrors what exactly was going on in the
country. There were many more but they all fed
into the package,” he noted.

The World Bank in its in May 2016 report on jobs
in Ghana revealed that about 48 percent of the
youth in the country, who are between 15-24 years
do not have jobs.

The report dubbed the “Landscape of Jobs in
Ghana,” explored the opportunities for youth
inclusion in Ghana’s labour market.

“In Ghana, youth are less likely than adults to
be working: in 2012, about 52% of people aged
15-24 were employed (compared to about 90% for the
25-64 population), a third were in school, 14%
were inactive and 4% were unemployed actively
looking for job. Young women in the same age group
are particularly disadvantaged and have much
higher inactivity rates that men: 17% of young
female are inactive as opposed to 11% of males,”
the report added.

Admitting that the timing for the IMF package was
wrong, Dr Kunbour mentioned that the situation
made it easier for their opponents to convince the
electorate.

“There is no way you can run austerity in this
part of the world of an emerging economy in which
hardship cannot be wished away. And because you
are incumbent, it becomes difficult. You can’t
say as we take this major step, this is going to
be the outcome. It becomes easier for your
opponent. They simply look at it and because they
have no responsibility at the time, they make a
very clear statement so there is no attempt at
rationalising the state of economy. They were in a
relative comfort zone,” he said.

The cracks in the NDC appears deepened after the
party lost the December elections to the New
Patriotic Party with many calling on leadership of
the party to find an antidote lest the party
breaks down.

Source - www.ghanaweb.com

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