Election 2020: Presidency not John Mahama’s property - NPP

The governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has said former President John Dramani Mahama’s refusal to concede defeat in the December 7 polls is part of his “selfish” grand scheme to save his face with the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) while perpetuating himself as the party’s best bet for the 2024 elections.

At a press conference on Tuesday, December 15, 2020, General Secretary of the NPP, John Boadu called on civil society organisations, the clergy and media to tell the 2020 presidential candidate of the NDC to concede.

According to him, the presidency neither belongs to Mr Mahama nor are his ego and selfish presidential ambitions bigger than Ghana, as a nation.

He said despite Mr Mahama self-denial of his electoral defeat, “we shall not be distracted”, adding: “Let the Ghanaian people speak out. The National Peace Council, National House of Chiefs and civil society organisations, speak out and tell John Dramani Mahama that this country is bigger than his ego”.

“John Mahama is refusing to concede because he wants to contest in 2024 so it is in his interest to claim he’s been cheated so as to save face and forestall a situation whereby the NDC may have to replace him. So, that is his game plan. He thinks he deserves the presidency after polling 47 per cent of the votes as if it is his personal property”, Mr Boadu said.

The former President’s selfish interest, Mr Boadu noted, is what is leading him to incite the youth to hit the streets to demonstrate while his children are embedded within the safety of his home.

He further accused Mr Mahama of becoming the Donald Trump of Ghana.

The NPP General Secretary also rubbished claims by the NDC that it won a majority of 140 seats in Parliament.

On the contrary, he said: “The NPP has the majority of seats in Parliament”, explaining: “NDC has 136 seats while NPP has 137 seats”.

“There is one independent MP. So, NDC’s claim that it is the one with the majority in Parliament and, so, would be appointing the leadership of Parliament has fallen into water just like their campaign did”.

“They [NDC] didn’t have any collation system to know, there’s no doubt about it; they didn’t have any system in place to tell whether they won or not, they didn’t put any system in place to follow up their pink sheet collection and their collation sheet collection from constituency to region and all that. But, as we speak now, it should be clear to them that they don’t have the 140 seats they are talking about and they can’t have it”, Mr Boadu asserted.

The re-elected Akufo-Addo government, Mr Boadu said, will continue with its mandate irrespective of Mr Mahama and the NDC’s posture.

“We’re strengthening with the work that the Akufo-Addo-led government has done in the last four years to advance the development of this country”.

“We therefore, call on all Ghanaians to condemn without reservation, the intransigence of the NDC and urge the NDC to resort to the courts to address their grievances if they believe they have any.

“We call on the security agencies to be resolute and protect the state. We are confident that the majority of Ghanaians believe in and accept the verdict of the election, as rendered by Electoral Commission and supported by all except the NDC”, he noted.

He said the slit of the parliamentary results shows that Ghanaians wants the Majority and Minority Caucuses to work together.

“The closeness of the parliamentary votes is Ghanaians’ way of telling us to cooperate and avoid the adversarial politics that have characterised most of our fourth republican politics. We accept this challenge. We shall work with the Minority for the interest of this country”, he promised.

“It is important to again state that we also dispute the results of some of the parliamentary [seats] but we have not asked our supporters to go on the streets to protest these results. Our lawyers are putting these results together to the courts to challenge them and I can site one typical straightforward example of Banda constituency. When we put our pink sheets together, we realised that we’re winning by 27 margin; that means that our parliamentary candidate should have been the one to be declared the MP-elect”.