?Spio, Eddie Annan, Mahamas yet to register
Investigations conducted by The Statesman to determine the popularity and suitability of John Evans Atta Mills again as candidate for 2008 indicate that activists and foot soldiers of the nation?s largest opposition party?s choice of party flagbearer for the 2008 elections is so far in consonance with the choice of the NDC leadership who hold that Evans Atta Mills is still the man to lead the NDC.
Prof Mills has suffered three back-to-back defeats to John Agyekum Kufuor in his bid to lead the country.
The survey was conducted in generally friendly NDC areas from La to Pwalugu. It revealed that over seventy percent of respondents favoured a Mills candidacy. By the reckoning of most of the respondents, any new face emerging on the NDC front to upstage Mills will have to possess supernatural popularity powers to match the near decade of hard work put in by both the party and the individual Mills to market him to Ghanaians.
The message from the NDC rank and file is for all the other potential candidates to put their ambition on hold and ?join the queue.?
Reasons given by respondents for retaining Mills ranged from the claim that he has been marketed enough to hopes that he will be a moderating influence on the political environment in the nation?s post-2008 political landscape. The pragmatics who hold this view also point to the fact that the party would have to spend anything up to twice what could be required for a Mills candidacy on a new candidate.
Some of the evidence is up and down the country. Districts nationwide are still sprawled with billboards of ?Prof Mills for President? over a year and a half after the last general elections.
?It is as if the DCEs are working for him, too? observed one NPP loyalist who is now serving the government overseas.
Other areas where the survey was conducted were the business district of Accra, La, Teshie and Nungua, the Kintampo lorry station, Navrongo, Paga border posts and community, Tono, Vea, Bolgatanga, Techiman and some tomato producing communities, including Afrantcho and Bono Manso.
The rest were Dangme areas, comprising Asutsuare, Osu-Doku Akuse and Dodowa. For the Volta region, sampling was done in Aflao, Hohoe and Kpeve. When The Statesman decided last weekend to check its findings against the current thinking of the leadership of the NDC, a key member close to party founder Jerry Rawlings stated:
?If Spio decides to run?if Eddie Annan decides to run?or John Mahama and Alhaji Iddrisu Mahama?that?s okay constitutionally and democratically...That does not mean the party?s founder is interested in kicking out Mills for another candidate for 2008 as you people are trying to convey to the ordinary people.?
The source continued, ?It only means ex-President Jerry John Rawlings will not interfere with the processes?and it also means that congress eventually will decide which of them will lead the party in 2008?Rawlings is not bringing a Spio or Eddie Annan or Nana Konadu against the wishes and supreme interests of the party?Congress will decide? not him or me or Mills himself or any bloke? ??As party leaders, however, we believe the stupidest thing to do in that regard is fork out scarce resources to market another candidate for God knows how long?That is why we believe Mills ought to be given another chance to run against the incumbent party?s flagbearer for 2008?
?After all, Mills did not lose the 2000 elections because he was not quality material, nor did he lose 2004 for the same reason?As for 2004, we all know the verdict was stolen?so what is really this emerging charge against Mills to the effect that he is not a born winner, especially for a street boy who has braved the odds of live to become a professor??
In the run-up to the 2004 elections, NDC top guns like Totobi Quakyi, former Minister of National Security, the redoubtable Ahwoi brothers, Drs Tony Aidoo and Nii Armah Josiah Aryeh, former Deputy Minister for Defence and party General Secretary respectively, as well as Rojo Mettle-Nunoo, Mills? Communications Director, all went public with the view that because Mills had been marketed sufficiently, he stood in better stead as flagbearer for the NDC than any other individual for the position.
Nii Lante Vanderpuije and Seth Ohene Ofori, press secretaries for Mills and the NDC at the time held the same view. The two NDC entrants onto the scene, Eddie Annan and Spio Garbrah, who are now attempting to gun for the position of flagbearer for the NDC, at the time did not contest the Mills marketability theory.
