Solomon Nkansah
Former deputy Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Solomon Nkansah has opened up for the first time how his political party failed to collate its last two general elections results.
He revealed that former President John Dramani Mahama handed the collation system for the 2020 elections to Felix Ofosu Kwakye and Dr. Omane Boamah, former deputy Communications and Communications Ministers respectively.
According to him, the failure of the two to provide the party with proper system led to the party’s defeat in the 2016 and 2020 general elections.
Speaking on Kasapa FM, Mr. Nkansah pointed out that the NDC will remain in opposition forever should they present former President Mahama as their flagbearer in the 2024 polls.
He indicated that “If you will realize, the NDC party is more than the NPP, but as the Bible has said in Hosea 4:6, that ‘lack of knowledge, my people perish.
“…and they say no one is a repository of knowledge; when you take NDC as an example, when we lost in 2016, our collation system jammed.
“In 2020, our collation system jammed again. The NDC collation system that has been broken twice was brought by Omane Boamah and Ofosu Kwakye. They are the same people who are shouting to retain JM so that they will bring the same nonsense system for us to lose again.
“For what we know about that collation, it will cause our defeat again. So, we are telling the NDC members that we should remove the person (John Mahama) who has made them (Ofosu Kwakye and Omane Boamah) powerful from office so that we bring a different person.”
Mr. Mahama has already formally launched campaign in his bid to become the flagbearer of the NDC on Thursday, March 2.
He has promised, among others, to scrap the retirement benefit given to Article 71 officeholders, known as ex-gratia.
“The payment of ex-gratia to members of the executive under Article 71 will be scrapped. And the necessary constitutional steps to abolish that payment will start in earnest in 2025.
“We will also begin the process of persuading the other arms of government other than the executive to accept the removal of this ex-gratia payment,” he said.
According to him, his government would focus on reducing the president’s powers and ensuring the separation of powers among the three arms of government: the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary.
By Vincent Kubi