The Director of Research at the Presidency, Dr Isaac Owusu-Mensah has projected that the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) will win the next general elections.
According to him, the party is likely to break the 8 years cycle in Ghana elections with a narrow margin.
He however dismissed projections that the party cannot secure a third consecutive victory in the 2024 polls.
The Director of Research was of the view that the NPP has more advantages over the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in urban areas, where population growth has been on a significant rise.
He contended that these and other factors found in a research data conducted by him put the current government in the best position to win the next presidential race.
According to him, “I can tell you that the NPP will win the next election. If you go to Ahafo Ano, they are able to show you that [they] have about 5,000 of the voter population in this town who did not vote because of ‘abcd’ reasons.
“So, if NPP is able to galvanise all these types of [voters, they will win].”
Dr Owusu-Mensah however implored the Party’s leadership to resolve internal wranglings that can potentially ruin their chances of defeating their main opponent.
He suggested that the NPP should take advantage of its positon in power and improve its base in the various strongholds.
“Now, NPP has no candidate – we only have forerunners. So, we are unable to know who is winning now. But in terms of the parliamentary, our data show that NPP is far ahead of the NDC. But as we speak, we will only be able to know who is winning when the constituency elections are over.
“I will say this; the government can break the eight with a slim margin; not because I’m in government,” he stressed.
Recently, the London-based Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) predicted that public dissatisfaction with economic challenges, the slow pace of physical development and perceptions of corruption may thwart the chances of the NPP in the 2024 polls.
It predicted that the NDC “stands a reasonable chance of winning the 2024 election ”due to the quest for change among citizens but must change it presidential candidate in the 2020 polls to increase their chances of recapturing power.
But Dr. Owusu-Mensah says investigations are being done in order to come up with frameworks that would lessen the challenges.
“The difficulty is that sometimes you are unable to meet all the needs of the people, and that is a fact because of lack of resources,” he stated.
By Vincent Kubi