Between Wenchi And Abuja: The Coming NPP Defeat In 2016

Unbelievable and also untouched in political discussion within the NPP is that our presidential candidate Nana Akufo Addo lost the 2012 election in Wenchi, the hometown of Dr. K.A. Busia! No one in the NPP has raised this as an issue to question the chances of us winning the 2016 presidential election. To lose in Wenchi tells me we have a near impossible task under the Nana Addo leadership. However, in the wake of the intimidating cry of “No Nana No Vote” everyone was bullied into silence and compliance with the Nana Addo 3rd attempt agenda. What “No Nana No Vote” meant was that if you don’t elect me flag bearer I will form the UNC of old again but this time I won’t bother to leave the party with my supporters. I will stay as a member but my supporters will not vote on Election Day thus virtually guaranteeing another NDC victory! In the wake of this threat we ignored the collapse of our votes across the country starting in 2008, the decline in parliamentary seats and, horror of all horrors, our defeat in Kofi Busia’s hometown of Wenchi!

Now what is even more worrying is Akufo Addo popping up in Nigeria, holding talks with General Buhari –for what I ask? In the run up to the 2000 election the NPP needed to assure the UK, US and other major donor governments that a transition from the NDC to the NPP was not going to bring about a major collapse of the political order. Peaceful continuity of the democratic process had to be ensured and our donors, realizing Ghana was a beacon for free market and democratic reforms were happy to meet our candidate J.A. Kufuor. With our election victory, the role of meeting foreign presidents from our main donor countries by opposition parties was largely redundant and thus if Prof Mills met any of them for bilateral talks before the 2004 and 2008 elections it must have been a rather low key event as I don’t recall any such meeting.

Akufo Addo however thinks that there is some capital to be gained from visiting foreign heads of state. In 2008 he was seen in Guinea of all places, presenting himself as a virtual president in waiting. Now even after taking us to opposition, after eroding votes in our 2 strongholds, he cannot see the irrelevance of being seen with Buhari in Abuja. Apart from not adding a single vote to the diminishing number he has overseen, parading across West Africa in full public glare supports the NDC claims of Nana Addo’s arrogance! During the 2008 election, one pro-NDC newspaper kept saying Nana Addo was behaving as if he was already president with his long train of black 4 wheel vehicles, blowing their horns all over Accra. This appearance must be avoided at all costs. It is bad enough that some of Nana’s supporters claimed it is his birthright to be president. This is an utterance that we will struggle with in 2016 as we try to combat claims of his self-entitlement. Visiting Buhari will only worsen things. Meanwhile, has our flag bearer bothered to gone to Wenchi to find out why he lost there? I doubt it.

NPP has a serious problem on its hands and that is the sense in the party that Akufo Addo has virtually no flaws, he is not responsible for our slow decline. Everything is someone else’s fault except him. Even if he repeats the errors that led us to defeat we will hang the blame on someone else. Already a number of new suspects are being lined up. Having found JAK, Alan Kyerematen and the Asantehene guilty of letting the party down in 2008 and 2012, the new candidates to be blamed are the Chairman and General Secretary - Paul Afoko and Kwabena Agyapong are really NDC moles if the pro-Nana Addo faction is to be believed and should we lose in 2016, to prepare the ground for Nana Addo’s claim to be flag bearer in 2020, Afoko and Agyapong will be blamed for our defeat.

Meanwhile back in Wenchi…………………………………

Kwabena Nyamekye