Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has disclosed that President’s Akufo-Addo’s inclination to spend extravagantly on air travels would have continued without the intervention of Ghanaians in their display of disapproval of such spending.
According to him, Ghanaians have been able to save the “battered public purse” due to such public display of aversion to the President’s spending, especially as the country is dealing with a major economic crisis. He revealed that the President’s decision to use the country’s presidential jet for his recent travel is “Ghana’s Victory and not a personal triumph”.
“Regardless of Ghana’s current economic tribulations, and judging from the President’s overall track record as typified by his reckless refusal to reduce the size of his bloated government, despite the economic meltdown and strong appeals from multiple quarters; I am absolutely convinced that without the revolt and palpable revulsion of the masses in reaction to this ‘sky bath scandal,’ he would have obstinately continued with his obscene extravagance at the expense of suffocating taxpayers as he was initially determined to do for more than 24 months.”
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa
Presidential jet proven to be airworthy
Highlighting on President Akufo-Addo’s recent trip to the United States, Mr Ablakwa stated that Ghana’s Presidential Jet made its longest journey in more than four years after it ferried President Akufo-Addo to the U.S, landing at the Teterboro Airport in New Jersey yesterday at 8:21am US time.
He explained that requiring only one brief refueling stop at Santa Maria following an 11:33pm departure from Accra on Monday March 27, 2023, the 13-hour trip has finally exposed and totally silenced all government propagandists who claimed the Dassault Falcon 900EX was not a long range aircraft fit for flying to the Americas, and therefore President Akufo-Addo was “justified in wasting over a GHS100 million of our taxes on €20,000-an-hour chartered luxury jets for his earlier sybaritic travels to Europe and the United States of America”.
“It seems to me that after 2 years of a sustained, spirited, selfless, courageous and patriotic campaign to get President Akufo-Addo to stop his countless profligate luxury charters and return to using Ghana’s coveted Presidential Jet, the Ghanaian people can now breathe a great sigh of relief because our collective democratic pressure has yielded the conduct we demanded.”
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa
The North Tongu legislator has over the period expressed his reservation about the government’s expenditure on the President’s air travels, generating major controversies among the public based on his revelation. He has equally raised some questions on President Akufo-Addo’s decision on the use of Presidential Jet.
It will be recalled that in September last year, he discredited claims by Director of Communications at the Presidency, Mr. Eugene Arhin, that the Presidential Jet is no longer fit to fly direct beyond six hour, insisting it was a dubious claim. He stated that before President Akufo-Addo’s travel to the United States, Ghana’s Presidential Jet — the Falcon 900EX in August, flew non-stop to France for a flight time of 6 hours and 24 minutes from Accra.
Mr Ablakwa further revealed that the President Akufo-Addo left Accra on the night of September 3, 2022 aboard KLM after delaying the commercial flight, to which he questioned who used the Presidential Jet to France and for what purpose the trip was undertaken.
Additionally, he quizzed why government did not pursue judiciousness and frugality by harmonizing both travels to save taxpayer funds, particularly in this period of IMF bailout economic crisis, especially considering that the Presidential Jet flew to the same enclave within the same week of the President’s travel.
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