Vice President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur has justified his re-nomination as President Mahama\u2019s running mate for the 2016 general elections, boldly declaring himself as the \u201cmain adviser to the President\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr. Amissah-Arthur\u2019s nomination was confirmed by the President to his party, the NDC on Monday, after several reports and intense lobbying had suggested the President was going to dump him.<\/p>\n
President Mahama in justifying his choice said Mr. Amissah-Arthur has a good track record and has had a \u201cuseful partnership\u201d with him so far, that will give them victory in 2016.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”iT888DufdCaeH9q11I6d824P2fxIxs59″]\u201cI consulted with the council of state and nominated Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur my Vice president as my running mate. Reason being he is able and willing to do the job. He\u2019s got a good track record, he\u2019s been deputy minister, he\u2019s been governor of the Central Bank, he\u2019s been my Vice President, indeed he\u2019s been acting president on occasions I\u2019ve been out of the country. I believe that it\u2019s been a useful partnership. We went into 2012 together and I believe that going into 2016 together we will achieve victory,\u201d President Mahama noted.<\/p>\n
But Mr. Amissah-Arthur, who is not officially known as the President\u2019s adviser, told journalists after his re-nomination that, he may have been retained because of his honesty as the \u201cPresident\u2019s main adviser.\u201d<\/p>\n
He first said: \u201cIt is an honour and I have gone to see the President to thank him for his re-nomination and committed myself to work with him even more closely than we\u2019ve done in the last three years; and I hope that the Ghanaian people will recognize the work that we have done and renew the mandate of President Mahama for another four years.\u201d<\/p>\n
What do you think informed the decision to maintain you?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWe come from different backgrounds, we have different experiences and different characteristics; we are different people who are compatible\u2026 and I think that we\u2019ve been able to work together because the differences have been able to merge in cooperative work. I see the President has a lot of positive attributes and where I am weak he is strong; and I hope that I am also able to add to his strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n He added \u201cWe have tried to work by discussing in detail, and criticizing indoors. So I let the President know my view on every subject if I have a view. But the President sees many more things than most of us and has access to more information so he has a much broader picture of things. So from the view that I have, I have made him know what I think about a lot of the issues that go on.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Amissah-Arthur also expressed shock about the hullabaloo that preceded his re-nomination, saying people were ignorant about his close working relationship with the President.<\/p>\n \u201cI have watched and listened carefully to all the various things that have even said in the last few weeks, and I am surprised that people did not realize how closely we\u2019ve worked together; and that\u2019s maybe because we don\u2019t express our differences outside. The President knows where I stand on issues, I know what he wants to achieve and I am able to support the work that he has done.\u201d He emphasized.<\/p>\n His Excellency, what do you actually bring on board going into the 2016 elections since this is your second opportunity?<\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know why you ask me that question; you know I am not the person to blow my own horn and so you have to ask the President what he sees in me. Maybe that will be more acceptable than for me to say what I bring to the table because it\u2019s the President who has made the decision and has asked the party to accept his nomination so I think that next time you meet him [The President], you have to ask the President what he sees.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut as I said, every President meets a set of challenges; every administration is different; so we are meeting a new set of challenges that are different from the challenges that he met when he assumed the leadership of this country in 2012. And it is the way in which he assesses these challenges and what we can do about them in the short and longer term that will conti9nue to make this country stable and peaceful and make the progress that we want. So it is not something that you decide how you are going to do it at the beginning. It is when the challenges confront you and the way you react to them, that is what helps you to find solutions to them. And so we will continue the same way as open-minded and accessible to people who have ideas to provide the best solutions to all the problems that we face and will continue to face in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n What is about you that endears you to President Mahama?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI have tried to be honest in my daily interactions with him about what I consider to be the issues. I have tried to be honest and tell him as best as I can the way I think problems should be handled so if that\u2019s what he finds refreshing then I thank him and I hope that I will be able to be even more honest in the views that I express to him in the future so that together we will be able to find solutions to the many problems that confronts a President that he has to worry about\u201d.<\/p>\n Is that why he calls you his adviser?[contextly_sidebar\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes; I am the main adviser to the President so I try to do an honest job of it; not to make public a lot of the things that we say in private. And as I said, I try to be open as I can with him so that he knows where I stand. And I am grateful that he has given me this opportunity to be of service. And I will continue to serve him to the best of my ability\u201d the Vice President noted. Vice President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur has justified his re-nomination as President Mahama\u2019s running mate for the 2016 general elections, boldly declaring himself as the \u201cmain adviser to the President\u201d. Mr. Amissah-Arthur\u2019s nomination was confirmed by the President to his party, the NDC on Monday, after several reports and intense lobbying had suggested the President was going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":124601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[43,38],"class_list":["post-172674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-foresight-medical-center","tag-palaver-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=172674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/124601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=172674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=172674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=172674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nBy: Ebenezer Afanyi Dadzie\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"