Emelia Arthur Challenges Notion of Cash politics and advocates for Sustainable Development in Shama

The Parliamentary Candidate for the National Democratic Congress in the Shama Constituency, Emelia Arthur, says she disagrees with the notion that ordinary people are not interested in ideas and only want cash hand-outs and promises.

Addressing journalists on her vision for Shama constituents, Madam Emelia Arthur noted that her belief about politics is about sustainable development, where everybody expands their capacity and collective capacity to control their lives.

She urged constituents to invest in understanding their world if they want to change it.

“I’m afraid I must disagree with those (especially in the NPP) who say that ordinary people are not interested in ideas and only want cash hand-outs and promises.  I believe that our politics should be about sustainable development—everybody expanding their capacity and all of us expanding our collective capacity to control our lives. “

I think that people in the Shama constituency want to understand the forces that affect their life possibilities and to take charge of those forces, not simply be dictated to by politicians who claim to know best or who have a little money to splash around.  We must all invest in understanding our world if we want to change it.  My greatest hope is that by thinking, talking, and learning together, we may produce here in Shama, Ghana’s next Nkrumah!  I believe it.” 

Touching on developing the Shama Constituency, Madam Emilia Arthur, said, she is going to employ mobilisation as a tool to effect development in the area.

She stressed that the district will have its own version of John Dramani’s 24-hour economy.

“While all the investigations, bilateral and multilateral renegotiations, and redesign of global finances are taking place, we will not sit on our hands.  We need schools, clinics, roads, and markets.  We need school furniture.  We need teachers’ bungalows. We need fully equipped CHPS compounds. We will need cultural facilities to rebuild our country and its broken spirit and mindset.”

” Our answer lies in mobilisation.  In Shama and Ghana, we must look within and reorganise how we do things.  We must recognise that not a lot will come from the central government in the next few years.  We must restructure our expectations and move away from dependency. We must take charge of our development, especially over the next four years, while the national government will be so critically constrained.  We must have our district version of JM’s 24-Hour Economy.  24HE is simply a call to full-out human resource mobilisation.”