2016 NPP Presidential Race: Bawumia disqualified

Political permutation on the chances of who amongst the would-be flagbearer aspirants of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) will garner the needed vote to lead the party back from the dark clouds of opposition to government in 2016 is said to have claimed its first casualty.

Shockingly, the twice failed vice-presidential candidate of the party, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, who remained a cynosure throughout the novel election petition hearing, which made many political pundits and indeed some supporters of the NPP to mark him out as the ideal replacement of Nana Akufo-Addo, is the political ‘animal’ whose blood has been drawn by the party’s permutation.

Dr. Bawumia’s dream of leading the biggest opposition party into the 2016 election and possibly snatching the leadership of the country from the ruling National Democratic Congress is said to have been brutally dashed by the strong argument by his party folks that the NPP under the current circumstance does not need a Northerner flagbearer.

Reasons are that with John Dramani Mahama, though not a Muslim but are a Northerner who is well revered by his kinsmen as President; it will be highly suicidal for the NPP to also elect a Northerner flagbearer to compete the popularity of the incumbent President up North.

More so, others in the NPP say Ghanaians will not be willing to return another Northerner as President or better still; the Northerners themselves will not be motivated to vote for an aspiring president at the expense of a sitting president seeking a second term bid.

Though the former deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana himself has not openly declared his intention to run for the highest position in the NPP, especially when his boss, Nana Akufo-Addo is yet to announce whether to contest or not, rumors are that Dr. Bawumia is warming up on the touchlines awaiting the twice defeated presidential candidate to hang his political gloves for him to step in his shoes.

There are strong indications that in the event that Nana Akufo-Addo decides not to ‘call’ for a third term bout to achieve his childhood dream of becoming President due to his advancing age and health problems, Dr. Bawumia is most likely to be baptized by his mentor and twice political partner to lead the party to ‘stardom’ come 2016.

But to some members of the NPP, who whiles conceding Dr. Bawumia’s vast knowledge in Economics and seeming popularity on the political landscape, they still consider his flagbearership as a suicidal political decision if allowed to happen, and will keep the party in opposition for more agonizing years.

Recently, a leading member of the National Communications Team of the party, Mr. Yahaya Kwota boldly and plainly told this paper that it will not be in the best interest of the party to break the party’s “convention” since the start of the fourth Republic, to elect a flagbearer from any of the three Northern regions.

“I’m a Northerner, and I would have loved to see a fellow Northerner lead our party, but this is not the right time for such a project. The current president is from the North…, he is well revered there because after Dr. Hilla Liman, he is the next person from that part of the country to have ascended to the highest office of the land. Do you think our brothers and sisters from the North will ignore the current president and vote for a Northerner flagbearer of the NPP in 2016? That is practically and simply an impossibility,” he averred.

To make the chances of the former deputy BoG Governor leading the NPP into the next election more difficult a project to embark on, former majority leader and NDC member of Parliament for Nadowli-Kaloe, Hon. Alban Bagbin in a response to a question in a recent interview on whether he is working to replace President Mahama in the next election, re-echoed Mr. Yahaya Kwota’s political equation.

According to the astute Northerner legislator, he will be an unwise person to attempt to contest the 2016 election when the current President is a Northerner and thus Ghanaians will not wish for another President from the same regional zone.

This obviously puts Dr. Bawumia in a tight corner that he would have to either fight in maintaining his vice presidential slot in the next election or bow out of politics albeit, temporally and take to his profession as an Economist.