NDC will bury NPP if… – Allotey Jacobs

The NDC Central Regional Communications Director, Bernard Allotey Jacobs, is advising the opposition New Patriotic Party to change its ways and learn from the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) if it wants to win power in the near future.

Speaking on Adom TV’s Badwam Thursday, Allotey Jacobs gave a lecture on the NDC’s political strategy that has seen the once "violent" party become the “most democratic party” in Ghana.

According to him, the party was stuck with the grassroot and remained unattractive to the country’s middle class because of its perceived violent posture. He said this class was mainly favourable towards the NPP during President Kufuor’s tenure from 2000 to 2008.

The NDC man said the party realized it needed to attract the middle class if it was ever going to win power especially when the National Executives of the then governing NPP had resolved to dismantle the NDC.

He said the party decided to broaden its appeal by poaching and grooming the likes of Kojo Bonsu, the current Chief Executive of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, Minister of Youth and Sports, Dr. Omane Boamah, Minister of Communications, the Majority Chief Whip and MP for Asawase, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka.

Crowning this group of young professionals, was the “affable” John Mahama, then MP for Bole-Bamboi, who was chosen to be the rallying figure around which the NDC would attract the middle-class and eat into the support base of the NPP, Allotey Jacobs intimated.

This strategy worked to perfection, he said, because the party found the formula to win the 2008 and 2012 elections. He credited a former Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, for helping in the re-branding of the NDC.

He was sure that with this winning formula, the party is grounded to “move from victory onto victory”. The NDC, he said is “building the young to take over leadership”- something that the NPP should learn to do.

Commenting on the fortunes of the opposition NPP, Allotey Jacobs said there were dissenting voices within the NPP which proves that “a third force within the party wants to take over” the leadership of the party.

He mentioned former NPP presidential aspirant Arthur Kennedy who has been critical of his party and former Minister for Information Stephen Asamoah Boateng who publicly criticized party executives for embarking on a Thank-You tour after the Supreme Court verdict on the election petition, as some of the people determined to redirect the party.

He predicted that if the NPP does not “change their ways”, shed its “aristocratic” tag and “stop drinking whiskey”, then the NDC will “bury them in the Sahara desert” and “the party will be thirsty like a camel walking lonely in the desert”.