The Head of Monitoring and Policy Evaluation Unit at the Presidency, Dr. Tony Aidoo has challenged critics of President J.E. A. Mills’ decision to skip the 65th United Nations General Assembly in New York in favour of a duty tour of China to judge for themselves if the president’s choice was not more beneficial for the country. Calling President Mills’ visit to China as a hands-on approach to governance, Dr. Aidoo, who was speaking on Radio Gold’s Alhaji and Alhaji programme on Saturday, said the very critics who have vowed to criticize the president since his investiture, have claimed that the government was not putting money in people’s pockets and yet expected him to go and sit at the UN to go and continue the lamentations of the past 50 years by many African leaders who have stood at the UN’s rostrums for the sole purpose of lamentations. “…Lamentations of the developmental backwardness of African countries and then you come back and what... ?” He said the socio-economic and developmental value of the Eastern Corridor road infrastructure for instance – from Tema in the Greater Accra Region to Paga in the Upper East Region to which the government intends to apply part of the credit secured from the Chinese, is very high and will create a lot of jobs for so many people and improve their lots. “Even the very process of the construction of that road will engage more than 85 local communities in employment. Eighty five communities, we’re talking therefore about almost one million people along the corridor whose lives would change dramatically right from the beginning of the construction…” Dr. Aidoo said the UN has not been able to achieve even 10 percent of its development targets for several decades, owing largely to its lack of muscle and the dominance of its system by core capitalist countries who know and act that Africa’s under-development remains the positive conditions of their affluence and therefore ensure that that situation must be perpetuated. “This trip of Mills to China is a hands-on system of governance – get the money and take it where it is most needed,” he said. Dr. Tony Aidoo expressed doubt about the Convention People’s Party’s Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom’s appreciation of what an economic blueprint is, saying it is not true that the ruling government lacked an economic development policy as the CPP claimed at a recent press conference when it outdoored what it said was its alternatives to Ghana’s economic management. The CPP on September 22, 2010 addressed the media in what it said was the first in a series of “What the CPP Will Do” programme that will tackle various aspects of national life and put out the party’s suggested solutions. Dr. Nduom, the CPP’s Shadow Minister For Finance & Economic Planning addressed the occasion. Story by Myjoyonline.com/Ghana