The Minority in Parliament may be searching for “new ideas,” but Prof. Kobby Mensah has suggested they first look for evidence that their old ones ever worked.
The Chief Executive of the Ghana Tourism Development Company has delivered a stinging rebuttal to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Minority following their December 29 press conference, where they accused the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) of incompetence and recycling ideas an allegation critics say is rich coming from a party whose own record is still haunting the cedi.
Led by former Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the Minority took aim at the Bank of Ghana’s Gold-for-Reserves programme, alleging a $214 million state loss and calling for a bipartisan parliamentary probe.
But Prof. Mensah was unimpressed, dismissing the Minority’s performance as loud rhetoric unsupported by results.
In a pointed post on X, the University of Ghana Business School lecturer appeared to give Oppong Nkrumah a quick refresher course in recent economic history.
“Which of your ‘old’ ideas reduced the pound sterling from 23 cedis to 14? The dollar from 16 cedis to 11? Or reduced fuel from 20 cedis per litre to 10.37?” Prof. Mensah asked, before branding the Minority a “Talk, Talk Party.”
The jab struck at the heart of the Minority’s argument—that the NDC lacks originality. For Prof. Mensah, originality is meaningless without results, and results, he implied, were in short supply during the NPP’s tenure.
At their press conference, Oppong Nkrumah accused the government of merely repackaging policies while withholding details until the Minority “exposes” them an assertion observers note sounds less like innovation advocacy and more like nostalgia for relevance.
“They have not introduced any superior economic ideas,” Oppong Nkrumah said, lamenting what he described as policy rebranding rather than reform.
He went on to question what fresh economic direction the government would pursue after the IMF programme ends in mid-2026—a question that, to critics, echoed loudly back at the NPP, whose own economic stewardship ended with record inflation, fuel prices soaring past GHS20 per litre, and a currency in free fall.
For Prof. Mensah and many government supporters, the Minority’s critique appears less like constructive opposition and more like selective memoryone that forgets who presided over the cedi’s historic collapse.
As the political sparring continues, one thing is clear: while the Minority accuses the government of rebranding ideas, Prof. Mensah believes the NPP is rebranding excuses without the numbers to back them up.
Source: www.kumasimail.com
