The National Democratic Congress (NDC) will elect a presidential candidate for the 2024 election on May 13th 2023. Three candidates have been cleared by the party’s leadership to contest the internal selection process. They include perennial contestant, former president John Dramani Mahama, Dr. Kwabena Duffour, a former Finance Minister & Governor of Bank of Ghana. The third candidate is Kojo Bonsu, a former Mayor of the Kumasi Metroplitan Authority (KMA).
The former president has been a regular feature in the NDC primary since 2012. He may have won the 2012 presidential election, but that feat is still consumed in history as the most controversial presidential election in the annals of Ghana’s 4th Republic. It was the first time an opposition party had challenged the victory of a Ghanaian election at the country’s apex court in a landmark election petition case, which close 5-4 verdict for the defendant, further stoked the suspicion that perhaps, the election was rigged to favour incumbent President, John Dramani Mahama and the NDC.
After that close shave verdict in 2013, Mr. Mahama has lost two other presidential elections in 2016 and 2020. In the case of the 2016 elections, the NDC presidential candidate received the worst electoral drubbing, unprecedented in the history of the current dispensation. Mr. Mahma lost more than a million votes to his perennial nemesis, Nana Akufo Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Mahama’s attempt to script a revenge in 2020 ended in another defeat, albeit a better performance as compared to his 2016’s.
Candidate Mahama, tried reminiscing the 2013 election petition of Akufo Addo and the NPP, but it proved a huge façade and perhaps John Mahama and his cohorts knew it was an exercise in futility even at birth. The final 7-0 drubbing verdict by the Supreme Court was only a confirmation of what some lawyers, had in discussions preceding the Supreme Court hearing, argued that Mr. Mahama had a very weak case. And that deduction was based on the strength of Mr. Mahama’s evidence of rigging or thievery allegation against the Electoral Commission (EC) and the NPP.
Even some NDC lawyers conceded in their closets, how it was untenable for Mr. Mahama to try using the evidence of the Electoral Commission, to prosecute such a highly contentious partisan case in his favour. Indeed, who comes to court and prays the court allows him/her to use his/her “enemy’s” evidence? That was the underlying argument of the Legal Supremo—Tsatsu Tsikata, the lead counsel for John Mahama and the NDC. That proposition proved unimaginable fiasco! In the end, Mr. Mahama and NDC were overwhelmingly dismissed in a unanimous 7-0 verdict, favouring the defendants—the EC and President Nana Akufo Addo.
After events at the Supreme Court, many began to associate themselves with the commentary that Mr. Mahama only embarked on that fruitless journey to convince many uninitiated minds and die-hard NDC zealots that the 2020 election was rigged for the ruling party. For many who were able to read in-between the lines, however, President Mahama’s petition call was just a pretense to court sympathy and to prepare the grounds to submit yet again, his twice bruised candidature for the third time in 2024.
And presto, the obvious demagoguery seemed to have worked tremendously on the minds of many regular party folks, even some within the top hierarchy of the NDC. But there are others who viewed Mahama’s candidature for the next Ghanaian elections from an objective standpoint and believed another perfect electoral obituary for the NDC is in the offing. That is if, the former President should be picked at all as the NDC nominee for 2024. The consensus after the 2016 general elections was that the NDC needed to heal all wounds before going into election 2020.
Attempts were made to patch up the cracks through a special task exercise to find out how and why the NDC was so humiliated in the 2016 elections. The facts-finding electoral defeat task force was headed by one of the finest Finance Ministers of our time—the late Prof. Kwesi Botchwey. Meanwhile, the findings of the Kwesi Botchwey report are still concealed with only a handful Mahama adherents in the party’s leadership aware of the full , a credible source within the party, hinted this author.
Why the report is still under wraps can only be a subject of conjectural predictions. Is it because it was commissioned by John Mahama and his cohorts? Did the report establish any adverse findings against the conduct of Mr. Mahama and his campaign team in the run-up to the 2016 elections? If till today, the of the Kwesi Botchwey report is at the privy of only the sponsors of the research work, then of what use is the report?
Thus, the NDC still went into the 2020 elections, divided with the pains of pre-2016 elections persisting. Meanwhile, the Kwesi Botchwey findings were induced by the agony that resulted from the divisions that aroused out of the acrimonious campaigns that preceded the 2016 presidential primary of the NDC. The general conduct and character of the Mahama 2016 campaign team to jettison many credible NDC campaign contributors to the periphery also caused the NDC. Their crime? They pitched camp with Mahama’s opponents in the run-up to the 2016 presidential nomination.
The NDC go into the 2024 elections still with multiple divisions within almost every facets of the party. The very mistakes that the party made to cause those self-inflict defeats in 2016 and 2020 are being repeated. At the centre of it all again is ironically, the protagonist of the two loses— former President Mahama and his orchestra of party executive faithful, led by party chairman, Johnson Aseidu Nketia. And so today, to such Mahama hangars-on, no one matters in the NDC’s presidential race, except the man Mahama.
They could break the party’s electoral code of ethics with impunity; go out in the open to campaign to protect and sanctify the Mahama candidacy without recourse to the feelings of Dr. Duffour and Kojo Bonsu. Regional executives will join in the fray, so is the majority of the party’s Members of Parliament. The NDC might have forgotten how Rawlings’ unilateral declaration for John Evans Atta Mills’ candidature at Agona Swedru publicly in 1998, ruined the party’s chances in the 2000 elections.
Unfortunately, those trying to order a level playing field in NDC’s presidential election campaign are being labelled naysayers by the Mahama elements. Nonetheless, none can take away the experience and steeled political character of those with such observation post. Their involvement in the formation of the NDC predates the inauguration of the 4th Republic and therefore, may have developed the political senses to predict right where the NDC is heading toward; and that’s exactly what some of them did heading into the 2016, 2020 elections.But who is prepared to listen to such analytical brains, when populism seems to have beclouded the right judgement and assessment of the people pushing for the realization of the John Mahama candidacy? Unfortunately, they call the shots in the party.
Conspiracy, Dishonesty & the Duffuor, Bonsu candidatures
The conspiracy to moot the John Mahama candidacy as an adopted project of the NDC, was initiated at the party’s national executive level, where new officers elected were given a clear mandate on the direction of who leads the NDC in election 2024. In order to realise that skewed agenda, all attempts were made to ensure that many adherents of the former President, won to occupy key party positions like party chairman, general secretary and others, in order to carry out the Mahama mandate with ease.
The plot has thus been hatched and laid perfectly; and to ensure an all-Mahama delegates are in place to transition the former President’s hold at the wards, polling stations, regional and constituency levels to a hegemonic take-over of the national executive. Who then can challenge Mahama with such master-plan in place? Many NDC folks are therefore not surprised at all that recent polls conducted by the GIA pitch John Mahama at 93 percent, against Kwabena Duffour’s 4 and Kojo Bonsu 3 percentiles. It may not be the case though, but they speak volumes.
One can only watch with grief the level of injustice and dishonesty being unleashed by almost every one of the NDC executives on the other contesting candidates in the NDC presidential race. They are openly campaigning for the Mahama candidature without remorse or retreat; even some are positing as if, Dr. Duffour and Kojo Bonsu are not members of the NDC. Same degree of Mahama, the untouchable chorus, was sung by NDC chiefs in the run-up to the 2016 and 2020 elections, yet the Mahama purity succumbed to the electoral nous of the NPP on both occasions. Yet, the NDC, is still repeating same, going into election 2024. Perhaps, such Mahama addicts refuse to appreciate the fact that their actions continue to create cracks which often fester unimaginably during elections.
These affect the NDC on a wider scale. Core but aggrieved NDC supporters may never vote any other party except for their beloved party; but can anyone also hold them accountable, if they show apathy and inertia to the cause of the NDC, all because the party leadership showed open bias against others they may have supported in the run-up to the party’s presidential selection process. Certainly not! One of the often cited reason why the NDC lost, especially the 2020 election, was that voters did not turn up in NDC’s Volta Region stronghold. People are quick to diagnose reasons but refuse to deal with the causes that induced such reasons.
Kwabena Duffour’s Ahotor Project
Even supporters from the opposition isle have commended Dr. Duffour’s Ahotor project as the best intervention in our 4th Republican journey. The NDC, core supporters of the former President claim same. Not only that. Dr. Duffour’s impeccable records in both private and public lives are unmatched among the people competing to pick the NDC plume prize. If even Mahama supporters admit to the prowess of Dr. Duffour, then why should such brilliant individual be treated like a plague?
On that score, I end my piece with the following legitimate questions:
1. Who will be best to prosecute the Ahotor project, granted Dr. Duffour lost the NDC primary?
2. How are the party executives or Mahama supporters disposed to carrying out the Ahotor project than Duffour and his team?
3. Wouldn’t the NDC need Dr. Duffour and his associates to continue with the Ahotor project going into the 2024 General Elections?
4. Will that not be a major election trump-card for the NDC and whoever emerges as the party’s presidential nominee?
5. Should Dr. Duffuor’s association with the NDC end abruptly after NDC’s presidential primary?
6. How would the party set such a collision course with a man who has been one of the biggest financiers of the NDC?
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