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The embarrassing story of how the New Patriotic Party dropped from an astonishing one million, five hundred votes at the bank in 2016 to 500,000 votes and from a still encouraging 500,000 to negative 1,700,000 in December 2024 continues to confound researchers, civic society chiefs, the media and development partners.
Stories By Nana Kwame Owusu
Particularly in a case where the contented Executive did not appear to appreciate the need to listen to the grounds, and institutions of national security lethargic over plots on the part of political thugs and gangsters to stampede the agencies of law and order, the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections will surely go into the history books of democracy in Ghana as the tragi-comedy of the century.
From delegates and electoral area coordinators to constituency executives and regional executives to national executives, it was a veritable day of shame for the NPP.
That state of shock was reflected in the alacrity with which the national executives leading communicators of the party fled from studios to the residence of the flagbearer to plead with him to accept defeat.
Since the late evening of Monday December 08 2024, NPP supporters and the media have been trying hard to fathom how a party machinery and campaign team slept and allowed the man they tagged as ragtag John Mahama’s army organise to lick a little over 1,000,000 votes and return John Mahama to the Jubilee House.
Worst still is how the party sat down cash in hand worth, insiders say, over four hundred and fifty million dollars, spending just some 150 million dollars and partying with the rest.
With the fingering still ongoing over who is responsible, critic, party faithful believe the first people to blame are the National Executives which decided not to listen to the ground in matters of the economy, including inflation, illegal mining, corruption and high cost of living and the unfortunate perception these trends created among the electorate.
At a time when Ghanaians and party expected the National Executives to show leadership and lead the campaign, the executive were busily outdoing each other, eyeing how they could contest the next internal elections and win.
In doing that, it failed to facilitate victory for the hardworking flagbearer and admittedly better candidate in the estimation of most decent society segments of the population.
Blaming party and state research machinery in natural in a party that prides itself of elite and professional human resource base is similarly natural as the NPP Research Machine turned squeaky, depending on media and social media vibes than breaking into enemy camp overtly and covertly to access information and intelligence to enable party strategists to review, redevelop and initiate counter-strategies.
The Inquirer is restraining its team from doing analyses on each of the people who contributed to the party’s loss, for it may not only be disastrous but make a lot of them bow their heads in shame.
Useless organisers
The Inquirer gathered from the experts that the majority of the blame should go to the national organisers – from Nana B through the Youth Organiser to the Queen of Galamsey of the NPP, these are the people in the centre of the controversy.
In the special case of Nana B, the man on whose shoulder the organisation of the party rested was busily being the ‘body guard’ of the running mate to the flagbearer, than getting the party organised and in proper shape for the elections.
Enter, the Ashanti regional chairman of the NPP. Benard Antwi Boasiako, also known as Chairman Wontumi. It was he who led the world bank of the party into the ditch. How he lost all the hotheads who protect the NPP’s ballot in the region to the NDC and blaming the veritable Kofi Boakye should be one of the issues the Mike Oquaye-led review committee must be interested in. Wontumi is shamelessly lacing his boot to contest the National Chairmanship slot of the party.
As far as supporters of the NPP and the media are concerned, these and some characters in the Bawumia Campaign team who fail to ensure that monies that were disbursed for operational purposes reached their destinations, are the people to hold responsible for not playing their roles as commanders of the army at grassroots, middle-layer and national campaign levels.
But that is blameable also on the delegate system that conspired to foist on the party an ineffectual team who were more noisemakers than true apparatchiki and combat-ready fighters.
Clearly, there was no link between development and policy and, for that matter, felt needs of constituencies being addressed.
SHS false hopes
Without any proper research, the party was leaning on false hopes that the Free SHS Programme was perceived to be delivering, though the NPP in all good conscience delivered the Keta Sea Defence System, with the reward being constituencies defecating on the project till Nemesis intervened, and flooding hit graves and shrines in an environment where worship of deities is divine.
The fact is that – deep within – the NPP appeared to have accepted the theory that the ‘break the eight’ was only a mantra by which a segment of the Executive and leadership expected to make good cash, while donkeys in the Ashanti and Eastern Regions worked their arses out in delivering the millions of votes that keep the NPP alive and in power.
That was a perception that bounced in the faces not only of the Executive and national NPP leadership, but also the loony delegates, appointees and national campaign goons, who failed to appropriate resources for party and national good.
