The much anticipated manifesto of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was launched over the weekend at Winneba in the Central. The launched followed a similar one done by the New Patriotic Party in Takoradi, in the Western Region, a fortnight ago.

The launch signals the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections, which is poised to be the most critical in the nation’s history yet, is taking shape.

Indeed, Ghana has never sunk this low, coupled with the worst economic crisis, a situation which has been agreed to by all the two main leading contestants, i.e. John Dramani Mahama of the NDC and Dr Mahamudu Bawumia of the NPP, as well as political pundits.

In other critical sectors like education and health, the situation isn’t any better with strikes by lecturers, especially the prolonged one by The Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana (CETAG), which lasted for 72 days, affecting students’ academic programme and by implication, their future.

These troubling realities make the forthcoming general elections a defining moment for the country which, in turn, raises the need for a thorough and insightful search for who will preside over the affairs of the country after the disastrous tenure of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

As a newspaper, we recently drew the attention of the political parties to put agriculture on the front burner, as drought, which is occasioned by the lack of rainfall is going to affect yields next year, this means they will be food insecurity which the next president will have to deal with.

So, in this campaign season, we hope to see robust engagements among the candidates on the specifics of addressing the challenges we face.

Of course, the problems we face in the country are already well known. Unlike the past, we don’t expect to see candidates give superficial explanations to the issues or romanticise the problems for cheap sound bites.

Gratefully, in our opinion, the political demography has broadened appreciably in the last two decades with more young persons, willing to engage the political space, with the use of social media and are asking critical questions.

It is pertinent to point out that every election is a referendum and 2024, will be a critical one. Not for the reasons some politicians have said it is.

It will be a referendum on whether Ghanaians are ready to make the necessary sacrifices to have the kind of leadership that they yearn for, a leadership that will guarantee a better future not for them alone, but for their children and posterity to bear witness, or a continuation of the pervasive shame and sham.

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