Mills - Mahama, NFP Mills - Mahama, NFP

Other Positions

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Policy Position on Law and Order

We need to preserve the high morale integrity of our judiciary and law enforcement agencies by setting standards of fairness and justice that serves our national aspirations of freedom and justice. The courts should not be mortgaged to the highest bidder or those determined to subvert our hard won democracy by corruption, nepotism, tribalism, religious intolerance and greed.

When we create a just and fair society built on sound moral and ethical values that benefit of all citizens, we provide a critical basis for best practices, evenhandedness and good governance.

We will continue to place high price and premium on the training of the personnel and institutions that best provide us with guarantees for national cohesion, unity of purpose and protection of the fundamental rights of all persons, all we ask from them in return is that they aspire to the highest code of conduct of moral and legal integrity

We will continue to support the equipping of the courts for administrative efficiency, the training of the judiciary in ICT for the expeditious trial of cases

Every government must without bias ensure the lives and property of all citizens by the law-enforcement agencies of the state, without regard to social class, political party orientation, religious persuasion or ethnic origin. More especially, it must be the fair duty of any government to investigate any crime with a view to identifying and prosecuting the perpetuators of such crimes

Judicial abuse of human rights and the prosecution of political opponents with indecent haste and abuse of due process undermine the very fabric and credibility of the judicial system in Ghana . Violations of Citizens Rights and the slow review of cases where clearly affected persons appealed against their sentences continue to be a source of grave concern for me.

John Evans Atta Mills

Policy Position on Trade and Commerce

I will improve the Ghanaian workers income and well being and offer a solid foundation for sustained prosperity through national development.

To broaden and diversify the Ghanaian economy, I will provide the enabling environment of political stability, a transparent public and private sector collaboration, business leadership, and requisite legal regimes for arbitration and resolution of business disputes as well as a well trained and motivated workforce coupled with the appropriate tax incentives and access to credit provide the key ingredients for a vibrant economic growth in trade industry.

As we invest in our human potential and capital to compete with the world on the global market, we must be guided by the need to build both human and industrial capacity and competence so as to move our economy from its primary nature to attractive and relevant products and markets capable of holding our own for uniqueness, innovation quality in the new technological age and global dynamics. We need to add value to the way we do business and network with our competitors.

John Evans Atta Mills

Policy on Support to the Private Sector

It is important to underscore the key role that the private sector should play in our national economic growth strategy. In deed, several intervening factors must be coordinated and supported by the right policies with clear targets set. We must grow leaders and systems of excellence in the private sector to serve as replicable modules or models.

Government will create meaningful domestic investment and credit and infrastructure banks to promote export and improved services in the private sector. We will facilitate the actualization of the true Golden Age of Business by targeted private sector investment and savings.

John Evans Atta Mills

Statements on Youth and Leadership

Our commitment to the youth of Ghana must be based on enshrining in their hearts and minds a culture of honest leadership and sound moral values that will sustain them in their quest to excel in life in all circumstances on merit and competence. We must be their role models of excellence and integrity.

The youth of Ghana must strive for excellence in every achievable endeavor by setting honest goals based on a national sense of fair-play, virtue and industry.

The future leaders of Ghana must be imbued with a desire for excellence which derives in part from a solid and robust educational system that guarantees equal and fair opportunities for all citizens to obtain basic and relevant educational skills that provide them with the requisite knowledge, aptitude and attitude to contribute as capable and competent partners in our national development.

Institutions charged with the training and nurturing of the youth and workers of our dear nation must be equipped and staffed with the relevant educational facilities, equipment and orientation. In deed, the vision of upgrading all institutions to move our human development and training agenda to a level where we train our human capital with the requisite skills and know-how to achieve her development goals cannot be over- emphasized.

Strategic Leadership and Industrial Management Training must form a vital challenge to our dear nation for we must begin to identify, train and groom winners and leaders for our industrial and economic emancipation. Let us invest in our youth directly by providing them with opportunities for excellence and achievement. To this end our tertiary institutions, youth associations and civil societies will be directly charged to provide quality and quantifiable results to meet our strategic manpower needs.

Youth team building and group dynamics strategies that foster healthy competition will be encouraged at regional, district and community levels to help address development challenges of decentralized capacity building for social and economic growth.

Youth empowerment schemes that provide catalysts for employment generation and the fulfillment of youth aspirations will be researched and promoted with a view to giving our future leaders hope and a sense of personal and collective achievement.

John Evans Atta Mills

Views on ICT and E Governance

The need for strategic management options in ICT to be adapted to accelerate good governance and the dynamics of doing business in the new global market cannot be over emphasized. In deed, my vision provides the need to provide leadership in policy and networking with both the public and private sector operatives to enhance the world of inter-connectivity using all the modern cost effective opportunities that ICT provides.

Ghana s accelerated development programme will require the implementation of a robust and major initiative to catapult social, business and economic activity.

To harness the full ICT potential of Ghana , my vision is to accelerate the effective use and application of governance, industry, business and trade by moving the Ghanaian society into an ICT age. This will open limitless opportunities for all citizens to access, utilize and share information technology to promote efficiency in E Business, E Trade, E Medicine, E Education, E Governance, etc.

One of the fastest moving economic industries and foreign exchange earners in many economies is the huge potential and opportunities of ICT. As a country requiring accelerated growth and investment ICT provides that single ingredient and opportunity and I will do everything in my power to move Ghana forward.

John Evans Atta Mills

Policy Positions on Labor

I strongly believe that the fundamental rights of all workers and employers need to be respected regardless of their ethnic, social or religious persuasions. Workers and employers will be encouraged to build bargaining rights and strategic corporate plans with a view to guaranteeing team spirit, trust, transparency, fair wages and high productivity.

Work place safety and environmental protection will be key concerns that will not be compromised for profit and exploitation, while reliable and sustainable insurance and retirement schemes will be pursued to ensure that all workers benefit from their just labour and deserved entitlements.

I will forge and maintain transparent systems of dialogue and arbitration for collective bargaining rights of all workers with a view to promoting a healthy and vibrant industrial climate for accelerated national economic development and growth.

My commitment to the rationalization of the pay and wage structure of all workers with a view to providing equity and fair wages will be pursued in tandem with social safety net schemes to consolidate wages and social benefits to workers.

Special training and human capacity building schemes will be initiated to address regional and decentralized labour and investment challenges across the country.

Conflict resolution, industrial peace and corporate growth will be key concerns while individual rights and opportunities will be central to generating worker confidence in the public and private sectors.

John Evans Atta Mills

Views on Democracy and the Funding of Political Parties

My position on the funding of political parties is informed by the deep respect I have for preserving the fundamentals of all citizens to use the electoral system to freely, fairly and genuinely determine who should lead, govern and administer the political fortunes of our dear and well endowed country.

In this regard, nothing should be done to so undermine the trust and confidence that our constitution reposes in the independence and fairness of the Electoral Commission through the perpetuation of electoral fraud, manipulation of the electoral processes and the abuse of incumbency of any ruling government or political party.

We should continue to reform, and seek to incorporate best practices of electoral systems globally to enhance the transparency and credibility of our electoral systems.

We should encourage our political parties, civil society and our development partners to urge all political parties to continue to rise above short sighted parochial solutions and interests with regard to the challenge and issue of funding political parties in Ghana . We must develop an even playing field for all parties in Ghana as a vital and sustaining virtue in cultivating confidence of all citizens in our political dispensation and electoral process.

Funding of the Electoral Commission itself must be so structured as to provide resources for civil society groups to independently monitor electoral process and feed back observations to the IPAC for appropriate remedial action. Funding must enhance the establishment of credible and continuous dialogue and debate of the political manifestos and mandates of all political parties.

Funding of Political Parties must also provide platforms for dialogue and interaction between political party functionaries and civil society on a continuous basis to deepen constructive engagement of all development partners.

We should enhance dialogue on the need for government to enhance our democratic processes by fashioning a funding mechanism and financial administration system for political parties based on agreed criteria that will help political parties to mature into real political partners of development and advocates for economic growth and national cohesion.

John Evans Atta Mills

Position on International Relations

Ghana as a sovereign state has come a long way in providing leadership in Africa, the Commonwealth and the United Nations as a country committed to the respect of the rights of all nations to fair and equal opportunity for growth and development.

In the global economy, Ghana is well placed to forge strategic partnerships that will enhance Ghana s competitiveness in international trade and commerce. In the areas of supporting peace keeping initiatives and providing dedicated personnel for such duties Ghana will continue to provide such services. We will also provide opportunities for the training of human capital for our international neighbours through exchanges and attachment training.

We are committed to upholding the numerous international conventions that guarantee our citizens rights and liberties as enshrined in the many international laws and covenants. We will endeavour to sustain this commitment by further illustrating that Ghana has the capacity to provide leadership in these areas through international collaboration for the policing of these laws and conventions.

We will guarantee fairness and transparency in all matters relating to trade and commerce and fashion international collaboration with both global and international partners so as to foster good corporate and international relations.

As much as possible the rights and privileges of all international partners will be protected with a view to promoting mutual interests and liberties.

John Evans Atta Mills

Statement on the Poor, Vulnerable and Disadvantaged

As part of our social democratic principles and collective responsibilities to the poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged, we will endeavour to support and maintain social safety net programmes to alleviate and empower this social grouping with a view to enhancing their chances of doing more than merely surviving to a better life and prospects for national empowerment.

Professor Atta Mills

Health

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Healthy people are productive people. We will build a Ghana Health Service which provides a high standard of service to every citizen.

My Government will support Primary Health Care. However equal emphasis will be placed on preventive as on curative medicine.

Developing a second-rate health service is the best guarantee of an accelerated brain drain in the sector. We need to develop an affordable but world class health services sector to cater to all segments of our population, to attract patients from outside the country, and to provide the conditions that make it worthwhile for the best trained health service workers to stay.

Professor Atta Mills policy on health, much like his policy on education, is predicated on his belief that access to good and affordable health service is a right of every citizen. As such, he echoes the agenda of his party (the National Democratic Congress) which argues that Health care must be provided as a matter of governmental obligation irrespective of economic or social circumstances.

To achieve his objective, Professor Atta Mills proposes a two-pronged strategy of major emphasis on preventive medicine (with special attention to malaria, buruli ulcer, tuberculosis, eradication of guinea worm, and an intensification of the fight against HIV/AIDS), as well as on curative medicine. In the latter context, Professor Atta Mills recommends a major effort for the Ghanaian health services to develop world class expertise in: the treatment of burns, reconstructive and cosmetic surgery, radiotherapy, nuclear medicine, cardio-thoracic services, dialysis, eye, orthopedic and ENT services.

The emphasis on curative and cosmetic medicine may appear ambiguous for a health sector which to provide services as a right of every citizen. It is, however, to be explained by the following facts: Ghanaians with the means have always been able to seek medical treatment elsewhere. Moreover, the best trained medical personnel have had no problems finding better opportunities outside the country to practice their profession. The vast majority of the population, however, is obliged to rely on the national health services for addressing their medical problems. Thus, unless the national health services are developed to such an extent that both Ghanaians with the means and the best trained medical personnel have an incentive to stay, the availability of good and affordable health care to the vast majority, would prove illusory.

In terms of financing, the public sector has a primordial role to play in the training of health specialists (including the local training of physiotherapists, laboratory technologists, and radiographers), as well as in establishing health facilities. The private sector establishment of health facilities and private practice will be encouraged. Health insurance (both public and private, national and local) will be a major source of mobilizing additional resources for the sector and for ensuring financial access, especially for the middle classes.

Education

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Quality education of every child and young person must be our top priority. Education should not be for sale to the highest bidder, and access to quality education should be a right, not a privilege.

The objective of my educational policy is to lay a solid foundation for a sustainable, credible and efficient education system capable of producing the human resource needed to meet the challenges of the new millennium.

Building educational institutions that strive for excellence by international standards is not a luxury that developing countries can ill-afford. In a global world, it is a condition for survival and potential leadership.

Professor John Evans Atta Mills

Public expenditures on education are always classified as current expenditures but they are also an investment in the future of the society. Thus, according to Professor Atta Mills, education (quality education) must be a top priority of any society that aspires to greatness, and public allocations to the sector must be protected as much as feasible. In any case, no child should be denied access to education due to lack of means.

Quality education will, however, not be realizable unless there are quality, adequately compensated, and motivated educators. This requires a holistic approach to improving education and specific policies addressing all levels of education (primary, secondary, and tertiary) with a focus on the institutions dedicated to teacher education and accelerated development of distance learning.

The primary objective of education is to produce the human resources needed to meet the challenges of the new millennium, wherever these challenges are found . In a global economy where resources (human, physical, financial) move to economic spaces where the opportunities are greatest, it would be a mistake to anchor our educational policies very narrowly on the human resources needed by the Ghanaian economy at a specific period of time. Some brain drain is inevitable, especially in a transitional period, when Ghanaian youth acquire the skills most needed by the world economy, and it would be foolhardy to seek simplistic approaches to halt the process. This is all the more so, since experience shows whenever a critical mass of expertise is developed in a given economic space, businesses do tend to relocate there to take advantage of these resources (India in Information Technology sectors, for example).

Private sector participation in the establishment of educational institutions is not only inevitable but desirable. The public and private sectors must be united in a smart partnership to create and implement a National Education Strategy. The private sector has a role in supplementing the public sector in providing quality basic education (literacy, science, technology, mathematics, and technical education) to those students who can afford it. Moreover, when it comes to the training in specific skills for industry, the private sector is better placed since such training must be demand-driven.

Economic Vision

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A society unwilling or unable to invest in its people and to renew and expand its productive capacity is condemned to economic backwardness

We dont get a golden age of business just from declaring it. A golden age for business comes about because we create a dynamic and rapidly growing economy that attracts business

My dream is that Ghana in this century will be the nation that leads Africa . An educated, thriving, and prosperous democracy, that we can hold up as an example to the world of what Africa can be, when its people move and work together.

John Evans Atta Mills

Professor Atta Mills, as is evident in the above statements, has a clear and bold vision for Ghana s economic future: a robust and rapidly growing economy which would transform the economy into middle-income status in less than two decades. For, in a world dominated by World Bank and IMF inspired macroeconomic stabilization programs, we tend to forget economic progress involves societies being able to produce better and more products to satisfy the immediate needs of the population and for exchange. A dynamic and growing economy is better able to adjust to adverse developments in the global economy, provide employment to the population, and to better wage the war on poverty. This demands a society which invests in its people and constantly strives to make better use of existing capacity and to renew and expand its productive apparatus .

A primordial economic objective in an Atta Mills Presidency will be to significantly increase public savings and to set ambitious targets for public investments especially in productive infrastructure (energy, telecommunication, water, and road, rail, air, maritime transport) which tend to crowd in private sector investments into directly productive activities.

Public savings
will be increased through improvements in the efficiency of public resource mobilization (an area in which Prof Atta Mills is eminently qualified to address after his years as the Commissioner of IRS). As Commissioner (and later as Chair of the Economic Management Team, as Vice President) he played a very critical role in raising Ghanas Tax/GDP ratio from a low rate of 8 percent to over 16 percent by the time the NDC left office in January 2001.

Improved Public Services
More significantly, increase in Public Savings will be sought through dramatic efficiency gains in public service delivery. To Professor Atta Mills, the critical problem of Ghana s civil service is not one of size thus the solution cannot be one of downsizing government. Rather, the critical issue is to reconstitute a professional, and efficient civil service, able to produce better (and sorely needed) services, to the general public as well as to businesses, in a more cost-effective manner. Professionalization of the civil service will particularly target the economic ministries as well as the foreign services. An important component of this professionalizaion will include better recruitment, compensation, and training policies, the setting strict performance standards, and holding civil servants to those standards.

Accelerated Program of Public Investment
Professor Atta Mills focus on an accelerated program of public investments in energy, transport infrastructure, telecommunications, and water resources, has twin objectives. First it is to provide employments, thus a determination to use labor intensive technologies in realizing these investments, wherever feasible and economically efficient. Second, and overriding the first, is the critical need to improve services and significantly reduce the costs of energy, telecommunications, water, and transport as conditions sine qua non for attracting and maintaining private sector investments in the economy. In this connection, Prof. Mills strongly believes that Regional Cooperation in the development of economic infrastructure, especially transport and energy, will be critical to the success of his strategy. This explains the Professor Mills strong endorsement of the NEPAD program of regional infrastructure development.

Special Focus on Agriculture
In his vision, agricultural modernization will be critical to the attainment of a dynamic and rapidly growing Ghanaian economy by virtue of its share in employment and in overall output. To this end, the strategy insists on significantly increased public support for agricultural research, extension, and the development of collective agricultural investments such as feeder roads, storage, and marketing facilities. A central pillar of the agricultural modernization program will be the harnessing of water resources for the development of agriculture in order to minimize (if not totally eliminate) the dependence of agriculture on the vagaries of the weather and thus dramatically reduce the risks in the financing of the sector.

Promoting Private Investments
In a global economy private sector investments (national and international) are attracted only to economic spaces where their competitiveness can be enhanced through adequately trained (trainable) labor force, well developed, reliable, and affordable social and economic infrastructure as well as through efficient public services (customs, licensing, and tax administration). Thus Professor Atta Mills economic strategy is private investment friendly. There is scope, however, for special efforts to assist domestic entrepreneurs, especially in the agricultural and primary industrial sectors such as textiles and food processing. In conclusion, and in Professor Atta Mills words, A renewed commitment to private enterprise, both domestic and foreign, shall (continue to) determine our national economic agenda, with a re-invigorated effort at creating a level playing field for all actors, and at the same time define a purposeful plan of action to protect our national resources from abuse and depredation.

The Platform

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On this page we present, in a succinct manner, the policy positions of John Evans Atta Mills on the Economy, Education, and Health. These positions are developed in some detail to permit the visitor to understand the social, economic, political, and analytical basis for these positions. We limit the (relatively) detailed presentation of the his positions to these three domains in order not to overload the agenda.

We believe that, even though the presentations are intentionally very brief, Atta Mills positions on the economy, education, and health are sufficiently defining that visitors to this site can have a reasonably complete view of what the his policy agenda will be when he assumes the Presidency in January 2009.

Professor Atta Mills has, however, been a public figure and political activist for close to two decades in Ghana and has, over the period, expressed views on a myriad of policy areas spanning: Law and Order, Trade and Commerce, Support to the Private Sector, Youth and Leadership, ICT and E-Governance, Labor and Employment, Democracy and the Funding of Political parties, and Ghanas Foreign Policy. The most germane of these views are presented in quotation form under the fourth heading, Other Policy Positions.

It is important for the visitor to the site to note that these policy positions of Professor Atta Mills are not cast in stone. As we pointed out in our statement on the Home Page, the purpose of putting the Professors policy position the in the public domain is to invite the visitor to the site to make a contribution to the development and refinement of these policies.

It is our hope that the Professors vision will be debated, questioned, endorsed, or embellished, and thus become a shared vision around which Ghanaians (irrespective of their political party affiliations) as well as the friends of Ghana can rally. We further hope that your contributions to the shared vision may lead to the identification of actions that can (and should) be monitored, as well as tangible results that an Atta Mills Presidency should aim for.