Politics

President John Dramani Mahama says the establishment of the University of Ghana Medical Centre (UGMC) with ultra-modern equipment will make the institution one of the best in Africa.

He said this at the inauguration of the first phase of the Centre yesterday in Accra.

The president in his address said the UGMC project marked another milestone by the country in its quest for quality healthcare service delivery and the completion of the project is a dream come true.

President John Mahama on Wednesday inaugurated the first phase of a new 650-bed University of Ghana Medical Centre at Legon in Accra.
Said to be comparable to none in West Africa, the $271 million Medical Centre is a referral facility.

The facility comprises eight separate buildings and houses, different specialised areas such as emergency, Imaging, operating theatres, laboratories and a computer room.

President-elect, Nana Akufo-Addo on Tuesday announced his first set of appointees ahead of his inauguration on 7th January as President of Ghana.

The President's appointees consist of people who - prior to their appointment - were acting in those roles. . .

President-elect, Nana Akufo-Addo, has postponed the presentation of a list of proposed ministers who will serve in his government to his party’s highest decision-making body.

Nana Akufo-Addo was expected to submit the list to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) National Executive Committee (NEC) for review, however, at a meeting Thursday, December 15, 2016, he could not provide the list.

Another meeting between Nana Akufo-Addo and the NEC has been scheduled, Joy News sources say.

President John Dramani Mahama has touched down in the capital city of The Gambia, Banjul to help mediate in a post-election impasse between incumbent Yahya Jammeh and President-elect Adama Barrow.

The trip to Gambia is President Mahama's first foreign trip since losing Ghana's general elections to the New Patriotic Party's Nana Akufo-Addo last Friday.

The vote, which saw opposition candidate Nana Akufo-Addo defeat President John Mahama, was only the second time an incumbent leader had been ousted in multiparty elections in West Africa.

El-Rufai was in Ghana to observe the elections as part of a delegation from the United States’s National Democratic Institute.

As Charlotte Osei, chairwoman of Ghana’s Electoral Commission (EC), prepared to release the official results on 10 December, El-Rufai said that Ghana had set a “gold standard” for elections.

Legal reforms

The presidential transition process will face several challenges, a governance fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Professor Ransford Gyampoh has said.

Prof. Gyampoh explained that, the office of Administrator General, which is critical to overseeing the transition process, is in dire need of resources to execute its mandate under the amended Presidential Transitional Act.

After peaceful and successful elections, I woke up on a bright Sunday morning to the #CNNGetItRight hashtag.

Like many Ghanaians, I have been worried about the way some international media organizations always portray Africa in a negative manner. Some even go to the extent of telling stories that are untrue. The article on the CNN website claimed that Ghanaians had elections in 1998 (which is false).

Ghanaians have taken the American news network CNN to task over a report that erroneously described the country as a place where "Ghanians [sic] struggle to obtain food and day-to-day services. Rolling blackouts are common and citizens often stand in long line to obtain products."

The hashtag #CNNGetItRight trended over the weekend after football journalist Gary Al-Smith noted the story and tweeted "I didn't know Ghanaians 'stand in long lines to obtain products' or 'struggle to obtain food'. And I live there."

We're expecting the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari to arrive in The Gambia today in an attempt to persuade President Yahya Jammeh to step down after he lost the election.

Mr Buhari is expected to be joined by Liberian leader Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Sierra Leone's Ernest Bai Koroma and Ghana's John Mahama, who himself lost an election last week and has said he will step down as president next month.

After initially accepting defeat, at the end of last week he claimed he no longer accepted the result and asked for a new poll run by a "Godfearing" electoral commission.