President Akufo-Addo
President Akufo-Addo has urged the rank and file of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to stop the finger-pointing and blame-game that has characterized the aftermath of the 2020 general elections.
It follows the loss of a considerable number of its parliamentary seats to the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the December 2020 elections, creating apprehension among the rank and file of the party.
Party members and executives have pointed accusing fingers at each other for the loss.
At a meeting with regional and constituency executives in the Greater Accra Region yesterday, President Akufo-Addo said “the most important thing for us to do at this stage is to keep together, reinforce our unity and maintain our morale.”
That, he said was because “if we are going to spend a lot of energies pointing fingers at each other, neither of those things will to be attained.”
“So I want you to have that in mind that these NDC people making so much noise, ‘we won we won,’ remember when they began one time we even went to 145 seats,” he said.
Aside that, he said “they could never be quite clear how many, with 139, 140, 141, 145, Mahama had won the election.”
Instead, he said “it all turned out to be false,” while noting with emphasis “ever since Jerry John Rawlings left the presidential scene of politics in our country, no NDC presidential candidate has won more than 51 per cent of the votes.”
“His successor, Mills, in his first round against Kufour made 44 per cent and second round, 47 per cent. When it came to the second time against Kufour, the same figures; and in 2008 when he contested against me after three rounds he got 50.03 per cent of the vote. Mahama in 2012 got 50.7%, in 2016 he got 44 per cent of the votes and 2020, 47 per cent of the vote.”
He asked rhetorically “what do these figures tell us,” saying “whenever we put our acts together we win.”
To that end, he told the party executives that “the majority is with us, so let us be very clear in our minds, our opponent with all the shouting and the ‘hey hey hey’ do not have the support of the majority of the people in our country.”
He therefore noted that “the future of Ghana, the future of this country is in our hands” and that “it is the function of how we behave, how we organize ourselves that will determine how the country will also move ahead.”
By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent