NPP running mate Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh
It was barely a week ago that Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the NPP’s flag bearer, presented his choice of running mate to the National Council of the ruling party for endorsement.
After he was quickly endorsed by the highest decision-making body of the elephant family, the vice presidential candidate was expectedly outdoored at the Manhyia Palace, the citadel of the power of Asanteman and stronghold of the UP tradition, amidst great fanfare and jubilation by the party elites.
The purpose of this piece is not to discuss the reasons for the delay that characterized the selection of a running mate by Dr. Bawumia.
The fact of the matter is that the uncharacteristic delay in the selection of a running mate following his victory in the primaries engendered a lot of speculation and rumors in the media and political circles with regard to the reasons for the delay.
While some political pundits attributed the delay to Dr. Bawumia’s indecisiveness in thinking on his feet and making prudent decisions regarding matters of national importance, others suggested that the delay was a function of the intense political horse-trading that was going on behind the scenes to reconcile the conflicting and overlapping interests of the party elites.
Be that as it may, to the politically uninitiated, the selection of Bawumia’s running mate was delayed; in reality, the decision was made a long time ago to at least select someone from the Ashanti Region, the party’s World Bank, so to speak, because of the need to maintain the party’s support base because of the weight of the impending electoral contest.
Among the likely party stalwarts from the region, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, known to the public affectionately as Napo, was quite prominent; others were Yaw Adutwum, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, the late John Kumah, and the Chief of Staff, Frema Opare.
The significance of the prominence of Napo’s name is that long before his formal selection and anointing, the public had already put him under the microscope to measure his fitness, which is the second highest in the land Like every human being with multiple attributes, the public has homed in and tagged the man as arrogant and temperamental.
Let me make a confession here. I am a founding member of the NPP and worked for the party during President Kufuor’s tenure, but I have never met Napo, so I cannot comment on these attributes as a human being, which, for all intents and purposes, are negative and do not make him fit for the role of vice president.
This is especially so because Dr. Bawumia, his soon-to-be boss, is largely seen in the public eye as a very decent and humble gentleman, despite the public’s viewpoint as being part of the failings of the current administration.
In any case, the discussions about NAPO’s role as vice president have been ongoing and predate his selection as substantive running mate to Dr. Bawumia, a fact that perhaps compelled the Otumfuo to counsel him not to “disappoint” Bawumia.
But, even the Otumfuo’s admonition for the guy to work extra hard to help Dr. Bawumia achieve his goal could have been motivated by the King’s concern about assisting the prospective president to succeed in achieving his goal of developing the country, rather than disproving the public’s characterization of his mentee as an arrogant person.
In fact, from the public’s point of view, Napo, in his maiden speech following his nomination, confirmed this attribute with the “your Kwame Nkrumah...” utterance, much to the chagrin of the audience and the public at large.
One need not be a Nkrumahist, as I am not, to accord him the deserved respect as a pioneer leader and also his respectable contribution to the development of Ghana, especially at a time when there is nostalgia for pioneers like him. Within this context, I call on Napo to consider yielding to another person to assume the mantle of Bawumia’s running mate.
In other words, if Napo loves the UP tradition and the country, he should leave the race because his presence will not be to the benefit of the party. Again, I do not know the guy personally, so I cannot have anything against him. I make this call rationally as a member of the party who is equally concerned about the party “breaking the eight.”. Moreover, in making this call for Napo to resign, I have the benefit of history as far as our political tradition is concerned.
In 1979, I was a young undergraduate activist of the party at KNUST when we worked assiduously on the campaign of the late Victor Owusu but, similarly, witnessed the presidency slip away from his fingers because of a similar tag of the man as “arrogant” by Ghanaians through vile propaganda by the then CPP operatives, who everyone knows are steeped in that strategy.
Thus, with this “arrogant” tag, Napo may be finished politically for now, and no amount of damage control will suffice to bring him to life as it were. Moreover, with only a few months away from the elections, we cannot divert campaigning time to focus on damage control.
Acheampong Yaw Amoateng is an Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Ashesi University and a former deputy coordinator of the School Feeding Programme under
President Kufuor.
