The second Deputy Speaker of Parliament and MP for Dome Kwabenya constituency, Prof. Mike Aaron Ocquaye has waded into the debate on why President Mills will not participate in this year’s IEA debate saying it was because the President’s performance in three years had been too poor. According to him, if president Mills attended the presidential debate, he would not be able to justify the mess created by his government for the past three-and-a-half years. Professor Mike Ocquaye said this when he commented on President Mills’ withdrawal from this year’s presidential debate organized by the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA). The ruling NDC has indicated that President Mills and Vice President John Mahama will not participate in this year's presidential and vice-presidential debates being organized by the Institute of Economic Affairs. The NDC believes it has better and more efficient platforms to sell candidate John Mills than is being provided by the Institute of Economic Affairs. However, speaking on Asempa FM’s Ekosii-Sen on Thursday, Professor Mike Ocquaye noted that president Mills cannot go for any debate in the country this year which is an election year because he has failed. “I am not surprised Mills is absenting himself from the IEA debate because he cannot justify his bad governance in three years. His performance is bad. This is a government bedeviled with corruption and bad leadership so how can the one who is in the helm of affairs of all this mess put up for debate? He knows his weakness,” he asserted. The NPP stalwart stressed that due to the bad leadership of the president, the country was losing a lot of investors. “The confidence in the economy has dwindled dramatically so it is shying a lot of investors away. When you look at the economic, social, political performances, they are all bad and cannot be defended in anyway. TOR has not been working for years now so everything is in disarray”. He stated that Ghanaians under the leadership of president Mills were suffering and needed an alternative in the upcoming elections fearing the worst could happen to the country. “Ghanaians are really suffering in the hands of Mills so we have to change for the better”. When queried on the chances of the NPP in the upcoming elections, Professor Mike Ocquaye asserted that for the sake of Ghana, NPP must win the 2012 elections in order to salvage the people from the mess created by NDC. According to the Dome Kwabenya MP, much of the mess being created under the Mills government could not have happened under the Kufuor administration because of good leadership. “There is no way Woyomegate would have happened under Kufuor. I am saying this in the name of God. No way. It is simply unimaginable, how can one single minister take a decision for a responsible government without recourse to the law?” He said he was convinced NPP would win the elections. “The governance has been turned into propaganda and bad leadership”. He admonished the government to stop seeking refuge under the perceived failings of the previous government. “Any time he (Mills) comes to Parliament to deliver the state of the nation address, he laments about the work of the Kufuor government and we cannot work like that. Governance is not about lamentation, blame games, equalization but hard work”. Professor Ocquaye charged the youth of Ghana to uphold the rule of law and ask for accountability from their leaders. “We want to be ruled by law and not by men so the youth must keep faith in the law. All the great nations in the world strive based on the rule of law so every Ghanaian youth must know”.