Private legal practitioner and Dean for the UPSA Law School, Kofi Abotsi says not all popular policies are necessarily good for the country.
He explained that some of the policies may be popular because it involves free things for the people but do not necessarily address issues of the people.
According to him, some of the popular policies may not address the overall good for governance, social amenities and the welfare of the people.
Kofi Abotsi said the numerous promises of the political parties fail to acknowledge the current Covid-19 situation we are in.
“These promises do not appear to take account of the scenario in which we found ourselves, the Covid-19 scenario. We have a situation with tourism, international business is suffering largely, the cost of borrowing on the capital market…”
Sharing his views on the manifestos of the political parties, Kofi Abotsi said most of these promises are populist driven.
This is because the party with that will have the majority of votes.
“…I will like us to look at this in context i.e one, manifestos are largely populist driven so if you look at the promises that are made they are largely populist in character in the sense that they tend to appeal to the majority of the people. So it is no surprise therefore that it seems that the two leading parties are competing in the freebies business, everyone is trying to show that they can give the maximum number of things for free. The reason is that for a country that is largely made up of poor people whatever you promised which are free you are likely to have the largest number of people following you. Because people can’t afford to pay so they are happy… the danger is that we run what is called the risk to the bottom end mentality…”
