Can Akufo-Addo Convince Ghanaians To Vote For Him?

Questionable Victory

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, at the end of what was a cliffhanger-of-a-congress, emerged winner and flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party by claiming 47.2% of the valid votes cast.

What it means is that, the new presidential candidate of the NPP is flying on the wings of less than half of the delegates whose decision it was to decide on whom to lead the party.

By whatever stretch of the imagination, Nana Akufo-Addo cannot lay claim to having his party fully behind him.

For a man who was not able to get his party to rally solidly behind him, and is flag-bearer today, out of the “magnanimity” of Allan “Cash” Kyeremanteng, who chose not to make the delegates suffer more by going through another round of grueling voting, how can Nana Akufo-Addo get the majority of Ghanaians to be on his side?

Becoming a flagbearer of the NPP because Allan Cash willed it so, and not because he was convincingly given the mandate by his party, Akufo-Addo is walking around with lots of question marks hanging around his neck.

Without a doubt, there is the possibility of somebody with locus going to court to seek legal interpretation to determine whether Akufo-Addo can carry himself as the flagbearer of the NPP as he did not meet the constitutional requirement of gaining at least 50% +1 of the valid votes cast.

The Lord Commey Factor.

Did Lord Commey play some mischief to shore up support for Nana Akufo-Addo?

Lord Commey, the National Organiser of the NPP, on the floor of congress, without providing evidence, cried wolf and got delegates to believe that a certain Paul Afoko, who operates from the castle and belonged to the Allan “Cash” Kyeremanteng Faction, was distributing a $1,000 to delegates to influence their decision.

It is a known fact that Allan Cash was heavily supported by John Agyekum Kufuor, and so what Lord Commey succeeded in doing, was to get delegates to believe that the President and his castle gang were buying votes and in the process obviously incensed a number of delegates to vote for Nana Akufo-Addo.

John Agyekum Kufuor, is no longer popular within his party for obvious reasons and Lord Commey’s ability to get delegates to believe that the President’s gang was buying votes, certainly worked in favour of Nana Akufo-Addo.

Yes, some delegates who may have wanted to vote for the likes of Dan Botwe, Hackman Owusu Agyemang and co, must have fallen for Lord Commey’s bait and decided out of sympathy to vote for Nana Akufo Addo.

What people don’t know is that, it was rather the Akufo-Addo faction that was sharing money on the floor of congress but stoked the flames in the direction of Paul Afoko and Allan Cash Kyeremanteng.

Scaremongering in Politics

What Lord Commey did, was nothing short of using scaremongering to win(?) the day for Nana Akufo-Addo.

Did Lord Commey by any chance, pilot a strategy that the NPP is planning on using in the general election?

During the Offinso South by-election, John Agyekum Kufuor used a similar tactics, when he said at a rally that, former President Rawlings was working with certain groups to purchase arms to overthrow the NPP government.

Obviously, John Agyekum Kufuor was speaking to persons with a certain mindset and so used the scaremongering tactic to play on their intelligence.

More likely than not, scaremongering is going to be high on the agenda of the NPP as a way of holding on to power by whatever means possible and the NDC will have to find very potent ways of dealing with the NPP.

Should the NDC also use scaremongering?

I don’t know. All I know is that the NDC will have to be up and doing as much as possible.

Indeed, the NPP, to all intents and purposes has failed the people of Ghana and brought too much untold hardship on Ghanaians and the NDC should be able to have all it takes to display its past human-centered policies, and promise that the same human-centered policies will be pursued vigorously to narrow the gap the NPP has created between the tiny vampire elite and the majority of the people.

Is the NDC worried about the emergence of Akufo-Addo as the flagbearer of the NPP? Certainly not.

Check the 2004 election results and it would be clear that colourless Kufuor did far better than Akufo-Addo in Akufo-Addo’s Akyem Abukua South Constituency.

So if one considers the fact that Akufo-Addo is not popular in his home constituency, and is not popular within his party as was manifest at the NPP’s undemocratic congress, why should the NDC waste its time thinking about an unpopular and an unlikable figure like Akufo-Addo?

In fact, Akufo-Addo is the person the NDC was secretly rooting for, and the party is more than glad that with his questionable victory, the NPP has given the NDC what it wanted.

The Drug Matter

And with the issue of wee and cocaine hitting Akufo-Addo very hard via the telling revelation by Kofi Wayo (don’t forget that he was once a close ally of Akufo-Addo) that Akufo-Addo is addicted to hard drugs and so must go for a blood test and make the results public, to which Akufo-Addo has deliberately turned a deaf ear to, Akufo-Addo really has a high mountain to climb by way of convincing any fair-minded peace-loving Ghanaian to vote for him.

Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.