John Alexander Ackon
The Ashanti Regional Minister, John Alexander Ackon has stated that President John Dramani Mahama should have been re-elected in the December 7 presidential election because of his performance and composure in office.
According to him, the President’s defeat in the just-ended election was astonishing.
“When the results started coming in and we heard stories about annexation of seats by NPP in a typical otherwise stronghold of NDC, it became a bit alarming and immediately set our minds to know what might be happening in the final result,” he noted.
Speaking in a radio interview on Luv Fm in Kumasi yesterday, the regional minister stated that inasmuch as the NDC and its leader had lost political power, President Mahama should have won the elections due to the massive infrastructure development and strong economic foundation that had been laid by the government.
“I was not expecting defeat because of the performance and composure of a person like John Mahama who has done so well on the African continent, the world stage, and Ghana in particular as president. He has done things that people were not bold to do.
Mr. Ackon said the medium to long-term prospects of the nation were bright since proper economic base, coupled with super structure had been put in place by the Mahama-led administration.
“I was shocked by the defeat but I did not go down. I’m not a person who goes down easily because I am a highly emotionally stable person. When things go into me you will not see it, and that is why I’m not blaming anybody for our defeat,” he asserted.
“I am part of the defeat of NDC and hold the view that the totality of the party members have failed to deliver a win for the president.
“You can choose to give all the excuses in life, it’s still a failure and I keep telling people that you are not measured by the quality of excuses you offer for failure. So the moment you fail, all the excuses do not matter,” he told listeners of the radio station.
The Minister said the party must conduct self introspection and proper assessment for them to come up with new plans, ideas and strategies to recapture political power in 2020.
He blamed the NDC’s defeat on the party’s parliamentary primaries, some of whom went independent.
According to him, the defeat of many of the parliamentary candidates in the party’s strongholds such as New Edubiase, Tepa, Lawla could be attributed to disagreement and discontentment.
“We travelled too long with the issues that emanated from the primaries. We need to look at it again. We tried to expand the Electoral College, but the timing was wrong, and therefore abandoned it half-way. This allowed some people to hijack the election of parliamentary candidates,” the Minister explained.
Ackon believes that the NDC lost the election partly because many of them relied on the personality and affability of President Mahama to do magic for the party instead of embarking on vigorous campaign to garner support for his re-election.
“The President really worked hard. Everyone requested for his presence in the constituencies because he is well liked by Ghanaians. But that shouldn’t have been the case,” he noted, adding that the President ought to have been invited to put the icing on the cake.”
Answering questions on whether members of the party have come to terms with the NDC’s defeat, Mr. Ackon disclosed that members of the NDC had accepted the painful situation, but the vociferous ones among them wanted to react differently.
“If you go to the social media people are out there to encourage each other but those vociferous and violent ones, who are willing to give NDC bad name, have taken to the blame game,” he said.
“We need to be united more critically at this time towards re-organisation and annexing power. I strongly believe NDC lost the election and not that NPP won it. It implies that if we are able to re-organize ourselves well, it will be easier for us to take back the seats lost to NPP.”
From Ernest Kofi Adu, Kumasi