Women vote for handsome men – Kufuor

A leading member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has admitted that the Busia and Danquah factions are represented by Mr. Alan Kyerematen and Nana Akufo-Addo.

Dr. Richard Anane made this admission in a chat with another leading member, Dr. Arthur Kobina Kennedy. This conversation is repeated in Dr. Kennedy’s book – ‘Chasing The Elephant Into The Bush – The Politics Of Complacency.’

Dr. Anane also revealed that ex-president John Agyekum Kufuor had a view that Mr. Alan Kyerematen was the best among the 17 aspirants who contested for the NPP’s 2008 flagbearership slot.

Dr. Anane also said the ex-president said that women would vote for Mr. Kyeremanten because of his looks.

Below, unedited, is some relevant paragraphs from Dr. Kennedy’s book pages 8 & 9:

Kufuor and Alan

The last piece of this saga was supplied by the President’s decision to back Alan instead of stay neutral. Before her death, Hawa Yakubu had dramatically turned to the President at a party event and pleaded with him not to take sides in the Primary but the President had ignored that advice.

I remember meeting Dr. Richard Anane, a close confidant of the President in the middle of 2007 at a funeral. I had worked with him during my NUGS Presidency and had a very good relationship with him. He said that politics in our party would always be reducible to a struggle between the Busia and Danquah factions.

He felt that even though we were back together, the divisions that had cost Victor Owusu the elections of 1979 were still there. He felt that in the forthcoming primary, that struggle between the two factions was at play with Alan and Nana Addo representing the Busia and Danquah factions respectively.

When I asked him what he thought the President had learned from Ntim’s defeat, he said the President had learned that "he did not back Ntim enough and that if he wanted to go in and support a candidate, he should do so more decisively to ensure success.”

He said in the President’s judgement, which he shared, Alan would make the best President amongst our crop of candidates and that the women would vote for him because of his looks. He said that in his view, a person who had never been in government could never be President. He also said that in his view, the President had never received sufficient credit for his stewardship. He revealed, for example that when the President decided to take the country to HIPC, virtually everybody in the cabinet, including the Finance Minister was against it. “Yet after he had asked for alternatives and they could provide none, he did it because he knew it was the right thing to do.”

Another such Kufuor loyalist is Maxwell Jumah, AKA, Kofi Ghana, who once introduced President Kufuor in New York by declaring that “I worship the ground Kufuor walks on.”

Despite the talk of the Danquah and Busia factions, the divisions are not as firm as they appear. According to Nana Addo, it was Danquah who handed the leadership of the party to Busia upon realizing that he had been tarnished by Nkrumah’s propaganda to a point that made him ineffective. Also, despite talk of divisions, Victor Owusu had passed on to Nana Addo, his law chambers.