Hardi Yakubu, Fighter-General of the Economic Fighters League, has disclosed that the ‘fix the economy movement is not fixing the economy of the country.
According to him, the economy is a smaller part of the greater objective of the group in fixing the country.
His comments follow the Finance Minister’s decision to ‘fix the economy’ and address issues government have raised.
Reacting to this, Mr. Yakubu believes that the press conference held by the Finance Minister is to “take media shine” out of their protest.
“I think we can all appreciate the fact that the Finance Minister came to talk about this and acknowledge the work that young people were doing virtually. But we need also to look at the form of content of the address. First of all, it is very interesting that, [we] chose to do virtual protest because of the state’s intransigence in preventing us from doing a physical protest.
“…the finance minister also does a press conference; sort of to take the media’s shine out of the protest that the young people of this country had planned and center himself in the conversation in a way that sought to unsuccessfully deny the people the sort of space need to act”
Youth want the country fixed
Commenting on the virtual protest held yesterday due to a court injunction on physical gathering, Mr. Yakubu insists that the youth are relentless in seeing change.
“By and large, we see that there is not enough listening. You could see that from the responses the finance minister gave. First of all, those hashtags are not about fix the economy, it is ‘fix the country’. ‘Fix the country’ is broader thing that moves beyond just the economy. “The economy is a small microcosm of the country. There are so many things that are broken in this country that needs fixing, the whole country is broken and its never broken because of just a few years of actions and inactions. It is broken because of the compounding and accumulation of actions and inactions… by successive governments over the period”.
He underscored the need for the youth to be given a chance to correct the errors done by successive governments.
“It is worth it if you look at the energy that was shown yesterday. There is a general yearning from the young people of this country for Ghana to be fixed. Because clearly, the promise of a better society, the promise of country that you can show to the rest of the world; that if given the chance we’re capable of managing our own affairs has not manifested in the sort of governance and economic management that we’ve seen over the period.
“Every generation has a vision, has the responsibility to carve a vision for itself. It is its responsibility to either honour or betray that vision. So, this is our time to also put minds to work and make sure we find the sort of society that we want”.
Security presence, not surprising
Touching on the presence of the Police at the Black Star Square, Mr. Yakubu revealed that, the Police presence did not surprise him.
“One of the main talking points that came up was the fact that the Police found a lot of water to put in their tanks to go and wait for us at the independence square when people were protesting about lack of water in their homes.
“If you have water in your tanks to wait for citizens to spray on them, but you don’t have resources to provide water for people to drink; it shows you the kind of priorities the system has. It will rather spend resources in trying to suppress the voices of the people than spend those resources in seeing to the welfare and wellbeing of the people”.
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