NPP RUNNING MATE

A News Desk Report

A leading member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Nyaho Nyaho Tamakloe, Ghana’s former ambassador to Serbia and Montenegro has dismissed a group pushing for a Nana Akufo-Addo and Alan Kwadwo Kyeremanteng ticket for the 2012 elections as funny weaklings whose identity is unknown to the party.

“I don’t know them and I’m sure a lot of others don’t know them. They spoke on anonymity and that raises so many doubts. Let them come out and let the whole world know them”. Since Nana Akufo-Addo’s election last year as presidential candidate for the NPP, there have been calls from certain quarters of his party for him to name a running mate.

In an exclusive interview with The Accra Mail, Dr. Tamakloe said he expects the group calling for a Nana/Alan ticket to articulate what their real agenda is and what motivated their call.

He said until they do so, their call should be treated with contempt, adding that while he won’t totally rule out an attempt by certain forces to break the united front of the party, he believes they are purely up to mischief.

“In politics, everything including sabotage from opposing forces is possible. I won’t count that out totally. This scheme will come to naught just as it did in the past. We are one big family now with very little time to think about a running mate. I believe when the right time comes for us to pick one, we will. When we eventually do pick, he or she would be the most suitable person all has be yearning for”.

Taking the group on on a variety of issues raised in their communiqué to the press last week, he said their call for the ticket to move away from the north is childish and pure gibberish, adding that history shows that anytime the NPP chooses a northerner as running mate, the party performs better, insisting that but for the 35,000 votes shortfall in 2008, the Nana/Bawunmia ticket would have fetched the party power.

“Everyone knows what happened in 2008, Tain and all that. Records have shown that the north running mate ticket always wins the day for us. In any case, the north has always contributed significantly to the cause of our party. Right from the days of Jato Kaleo, SD Dombo, Imoro Salifu, Alhaji B. Adamah and a whole lot of others…the north has always proved useful. Since the time of Victor Owusu when we chose Alhaji Tolon Naa, they’ve campaigned massively for us. We can also cite the Paa Willie and Alhaji Iddrisu Mahama, John Kufour and Alhaji Aliu Mahama success stories”.

He said the tradition of the NPP can be traced to the north but even though the “party is national in character.

On whether any other pair apart from the Nana/Alan would stir up disunity in the NPP, Dr. Nyaho Tamakoe said: “We don’t have Nana Addo and Alan groups in the party anymore. We had a competition which has long been squashed. After selection of that leadership which Nana won by well over 80 percent, everything has been laid low. The party has internal unity. Since we picked our leader, we have been united and working, otherwise we wouldn’t have someone like Buabeng Asamoa, clearly an Alan boy working in the communications set up”.

He disagreed with the group’s assertion that the NPP bequeathed power to the NDC, insisting that “our problem was that we didn’t pay much attention to the polling agents. Subsequent investigations reveal that we were let down by some polling agents. That was our biggest problem that led to the defeat and not any other reason”. He said the NPP had done a lot of groundwork in the past two years. “We are not looking at the NDC’s poor showing so far. We have our own programme that we are pursuing and not how bad or worse the NDC is performing”.