Your intellectual dishonesty should not be seen in a practising Muslim - Sam George pokes Bawumia

Bawumia delivers lecture on economy

Vice President blames economic challenges on pandemic and conflict

Sam George accuses Bawumia of distorting facts

Opposition Member of Parliament for Ningo Prampram, Samuel Nartey George, has accused Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia of making deliberate false claims in his lecture on the state of Ghana’s economy.

According

Read full articleto the National Democratic Congress MP, the vice president in his lecture delivered during the National Conference of the Tertiary Students Confederacy held on Thursday, April 7, 2022, was inundated with distortions to escape reality.

“Several false claims were made, deliberate distortions of facts and an attempt to project a reality that only exists only in his mind. The economy is in tatters and even the jestful Bawumia forgot his jabs, jokes and quibs yesterday. He clearly has been humbled by the Ghanaian economy and he needs a bail-out,” he stated in a Facebook post sighted by GhanaWeb.

Assessing the vice president’s lecture, Sam George said despite the evasive tactics adopted by Dr Bawumia there were rather obvious some critical issues that were avoided in the lecture.

“Whilst we figure out a rescue plan for Bawumia and his EMT, let us remind him that his silence on the e-Levy was noticed. We also realised how the 170 questions he quizzed the late Amissah-Arthur with dwindled to 11 questions yesterday. Even with the 11 questions, he suffered a miscarriage,” he added.

Vice President Bawumia who heads government’s economic management team in his lecture which lasted over three hours, outlined the causes of current economic challenges in Ghana and touted the successes of the government in its management of the country’s economy.



In what he tagged as backed by facts and figures, Dr Bawumia among other things noted that despite the government’s prudent management of Ghana’s economy, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war have had a major toll on the entire status of the economy.

But reacting to Dr Bawumia’s comparisons of statistics between the current government and the erstwhile NDC government, Sam George said Dr Bawumia conducted deliberate distortions and omissions that are uncharacteristic of a practising Muslim.

“His presentation lacked a clear workable solution to the mess he and his team have led us into. He went to great lengths to prevaricate and ended up exposing the fact that he is hapless at the moment. He used statistics in a duplicitous manner underlying his desperation for some kind of credibility."

“How he compared inflation in 2016 and 2020 when the baskets were completely different is quite dishonest. Again, his attempt to paint a lower fiscal deficit between 2017-19 as against 2013-16 is unbecoming of an academic. He is very aware that between 2017-19, the government had omitted energy and finsec costs from the calculations. Such intellectual dishonesty should not be seen in a practising moslem especially during Ramadan,” Sam George said.

The Thursday lecture by Dr Bawumia was in response to several reactions to recent concerns raised about the current economic situation in the country.



Admitting to current economic challenges in his lecture, Vice President Bawumia said “from the man on the street to the business mogul, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the shelter we seek or have, to the benevolence we extend to friends and family, the health of the economy is the foundational instrument. To bring this home, essentially the economy is what we feel in our pockets. I acknowledge that we are going through a challenging time. This is the reality irrespective of the cause.”

Dr Bawumia however maintained that the government has managed the economy well and blamed the challenges on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.