President Nana Akufo-Addo (right) and Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia
At the end of it all, the delegates of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) have spoken. It has been a long journey to last Saturday, full of twists and turns as political family members campaigned to win the hearts of delegates. They have chosen Freddie Worsimao Blay as Chairman of the ruling party among other executive members and by that blazed the trail for others to follow in decent internal elections bereft of sword-drawing.
The occasional seeming arguments over issues are standard with such contests and should not by any means be a source of divisiveness among the membership of the party.
We are delighted to refer to President Akufo-Addo’s congratulatory remarks to the newly elected executives when he said that party internal contests are not about winners and losers but the party winning which is what happened in Koforidua and even defined the spirit of this commentary. The President could not have put it better, especially, against the backdrop of social media activities; many intended to create a wide schism between the two leading contestants for the chairmanship positions. It is instructive that some of these originated from persons with concealed agenda against the NPP, within and without.
For an internal party election to be described as very successful by the Electoral Commission (EC) official who presided over the exercise is an assessment worth patting backs over. Some parties could not survive such an internal election in the past and ended up splitting at the end of the rancor which visited the exercise.
The NPP triumph has put paid to the near endless period of campaigning in what some might describe as the most hectic internal elections in the history of the NPP.
To lead a political party with a pedigree of quintessential proportions and strict adherence to standards of democracy is no mean feat. Describing it as a party whose ways others stealthily emulate and therefore stands as a paragon of political decency and management, is dead right.
Freddie, as he is fondly referred to, fought a good political contest and won alongside his party. We recall his admonitions to his supporters and the party in general to avoid acrimonious campaigns since, after all, his admirers and others belong to the same political tradition and did not need to traverse the scathing tangent. That ties in with the President’s admonition.
As the curtains were drawn over the internal election, there was no doubt that losers would be pained at their loss but that is the nature of exercises which demand people or delegates to vote contestants of their convictions. Let them be sportsmanlike and congratulate the winners sincerely because, after all, in such democratic exercises, especially, involving persons from the same stables – there are no vanquished.
All party supporters, winners and others are needed to ensure an NPP victory in 2020 because this triumph is required for the actualization of the party’s dream of bringing major economic and social transformation of a country which has suffered a seedy period in its recent political history at the hands of incompetent, self-seeking individuals. Congrats Freddie Blay, Stephen Ntim and above all NPP.