According to him, members of the party agreed to make Akufo-Addo the flagbearer of the party ahead of Alan because it was agreed that it was his (Akufo-Addo’s) time.
Speaking to the media in Accra on Monday, January 30, 2023, the MP said that Alan should be the presidential candidate of the NPP by the same principle President Akufo-Addo was made the candidate of the party.
“Is it the case that Honourable Alan Kyerematen is not fit to be president? Is it the case that Honourable Alan Kyerematen cannot govern Ghana? I don’t think the answer will be a yes.
“Anybody that supported President Akufo-Addo during that time and today has decided not to abide by the same principle, I will say he is a hypocrite. And I will not mix words.
“By the same reason, I think that we are in that situation today that calls for people to understand that if we told Alan then that it wasn’t his time, if we all stood behind president Akufo-Addo and today you are coming back to say that it is not Alan’s time then I don’t know whose time it is,” he said.
The former Minister of Trade and Industry, Alan Kyerematen, is expected to face stiff competition from Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and former Food and Agriculture Minister, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, for the flagbearership position of the NPP.
Meanwhile, the vice president has been projected to be the flagbearer of the NPP in a recent study co-conducted by Outcomes International Ghana and the Centre for Sustainable African Development Initiatives (C-SADI) UK.
According to the survey, the most popular candidate for the New Patriotic Party flagbearer position in all 16 regions of Ghana is the vice president.
In all, the survey got responses from around 197,000 NPP polling station executives (PSEs) in all the regions.
“Data was obtained mainly through computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) technology between 15th November 2022 and 15th December 2022. Based on 95% confidence level and 2% margin of error a sample size of 6000 PSEs was used. However, 5641 PSEs were successfully interviewed (response rate of 94%) from all 96 constituencies.
“Greater Accra region had the highest number of PSEs interviewed with 1142 PSEs followed by the Ashanti region with 869 PSEs corresponding to 20.2% and 15.4% respectively. More than half of PSE’s who participated in the survey were Akan (54% [n=3056 PSEs]), and 46% (n=2585 PSEs) were non-Akan. In terms of religious distribution, 78% of the PSEs were Christian whilst 20.6% were Muslim,” the report stated.
Watch the interview below:
IB/DA
Member of Parliament for Tema West, Carlos Ahenkorah