HE HAS kept his cool and defied the odds. He has deftly maneuvered the otherwise turbulent internal dynamics of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). He has managed to avoid the tag of ‘government’s candidate’ by sheer dint of staying focused and attracting both the sitting President’s most loyal supporters as well as the fence-sitters within the NPP.
Even the supporters of his rivals admire him secretly and in more recent times, overtly, for there is something unusually attractive and politically untouchable about him. It appears he has come to stay inside the Ghanaian political class for a very long time.
The above is an observation made by this writer on the accidental or calculated continuing rise of Dr. Bawumia into the topmost spot within the NPP. You simply need to have a chat with the elected delegates in the just-ended NPP internal elections to conclude that Dr. Bawumia may easily outdo Nana Akufo-Addo in his 2007 attempt to lead the party as flag bearer for the 2008 elections.
Polling Station, Constituency and Regional Elections
It appears Dr. Bawumia has garnered the most support within the rank and file of the party as gleaned from the outcome of the just-ended polling station, electoral area, constituency and regional executive elections. By and large, many of the elected representatives of the party at the polling station level werereturned to office by popular acclamation. The retention of almost 87.68% of these executives is indicative of at least one thing – the Akufo-Addo hold on the NPP that was introduced at its congress in 2005 is as intact as it was in its year of introduction. It stands to logical reason, that if indeed Dr. Bawumia is running a campaign of “working with everybody”, he is already in the lead, for he has partnered Nana Akufo-Addo since 2008 and has remained his unchanged running mate and then Vice President to this day. It means also that he is a known quantity, he has become known and the people who worked for Akufo-Addo definitely know him. Those people, I submit, are the newly elected and retained executives of the party at the levels mentioned above. As if that was not enough, he has marshalled a lethal collection of old constituency executives and newly elected members hungrier for power than was the case in 2016. The fact that an average of 31.9% of old constituency executives were retained and as many as 67.7% of executives elected for the first time with the negligible 0.33% being old electives who have changed positions within the executives (as for example moving from Organiser to Chairman) shows the reconfiguration of the NPP for the epic political battle of 2024. As if the above is not enough, the party executive have returned 12 out of the existing 16 regional chairmen, with 2 new ones and 1 outlier, outlier because from the scheme of things, the newly elected Eastern Regional chairman was not the choice of the system. The reality then is that the system has 15 out of 16 regional chairmen irrespective of how the Central regional elections pan out.
Nonetheless, whether or not sponsors of the newly-elected Eastern regional chairman go to beg for “acceptance” as some MPs and his cohort have planned to do is immaterial to what is about to happen to the positioning of the NPP for the presidential contest in 2024. What is important is the signal the voting mass of executives have sent: “Go and correct the mistakes you made in 2020 and make sure you bring us all together to break the proverbial 8-year cycle.” This is why persons like Anthony Namoo, Owusu Sekyere, S.B. Kangberee, Divine OtooAgorhom and Antwi Boasiako (Wontumi), who were destined to be thrown out for their irritating performance in 2020, have found a respite to be returned to the offices they held prior to the contest of May 2022. The results of the regional executives elections also show that reconciliation at the topmost levels of the party has started; nothing could erase tensions more than the lower strata of the party speaking with one clear voice, to offer forgiveness to the higher strata and expecting better from them as the party forges ahead for the next general election. The combined effect of these internal election results means that by the time the national executives would be elected in July 2022, Dr. Bawumia would be poised to have a party that is ready for political battle and a candidate that has tested the political terrain since 2008 at the highest level of competition for the highest office of the land. This is one of the things that sets him ahead of the pack no matter what challenge his fellow aspirants may want to throw at him.
The above is not to downplay or overlook the quest by known quantities within the NPP to clinch the coveted flagbearer position in order to lead the party to the epic political battle of 2024; epic because it would be the first time under the 1992 constitution that two former Vice Presidents from the two leading political parties shall directly seek the mantle of Presidential leadership at the same time and not as running mates. It would also be because both of them hail from the northern regions of Ghana with likely running mates from the southern part of Ghana. It would avail the people of Ghana, the choice as to which of the sons of the north is deemed worthy to lead the Republic of Ghana from 2024 to 2028.
BY Xavi John Xavi Metorlor