Mr. John Dramani Mahama, running mate to Prof. John Evans Atta Mills, Flag bearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), on Wednesday said the NDC was not running away from the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) era.

“The NDC accepts responsibility for the bad or good things that happened during the PNDC era,” he said on Wednesday at a press soir=E9e he organized for the media in Sunyani as part of his 10-day tour of the Brong Ahafo Region.

Mr Mahama said the NDC admitted that there were excesses in that regime “which we have condemned and the leader of the PNDC, Jerry John Rawlings has apologized to the nation on many occasions”. He said: “We must also accept that we would not have a country today called Ghana if the PNDC had not come during that period, in that, by 1982 Ghana was growing at a negative rate of -8 per cent and when it adopted the Economic Recovery Programme to lift the country out of its collapsed state, Ghana continued to record a growth of eight per cent by 1986 and the growth has since been positive.”

He said that, for people to say that the NDC embraces the good things in the PNDC and shied away from the negative things of that regime was the abuse of history.

“In fact, I read history for my first degree and for France to continue to celebrate annually the Marseilles Day, which was the French Revolution where the Guillotine was used to chop people’s head off showed that no country had a rosy history all along. “The PNDC era is part of our history and during that time, hard decisions were taken to put the country back on the path of growth. “It was through the efforts of the PNDC that we now have a constitutional rule which is working….It is out of the excesses during the PNDC era that we now have a positive approach in fighting human rights abuses thus getting Ghana fast ahead of other countries. “I was never a member of the PNDC but I can stand up for events during that era.” He said the PNDC, as a military government, did not need the mandate of the people for what it did.

Mr Mahama said today’s young ones who were about voting age did not see the horrible state of Ghana in the late 1970s and early 80s to which Ghana had sunk. He said those who had seen and experienced the horrible state of Ghana at that time and the level it had risen to, instead of applauding the PNDC’s achievement, were blinded by political colourings and describe the PNDC era as monstrous.

However, there are some who perpetrated economic atrocities against the State and are now arrogating angelic platitudes to themselves, when they were doing worse things to the people now than the PNDC did. Mr Mahama said the genuine love and enthusiasm that both the young and the old were displaying to the NDC on its campaign trail were so convincing that “our opponents cannot stand the truth, honesty and humility and above all the deeper love NDC has for Ghanaians under the slogan, ‘Mills – I care for you'”.

Source: GNA