Campaign Manager for the late President John Evans Atta-Mills; Rojo Mettle Nunoo has attributed the NDC’s defeat in the 2016 elections to its inability to erase the “corruption” tag propagated by opposition parties prior to the elections from the minds of Ghanaians.
According to him, the perception of a corrupt leadership and party, engraved by constant recapping in the minds of Ghanaians, was one major reason that accounted for the party’s fall in the 2016 polls. The perception he explained created distrust in the party.
In an interview with JoyNews, Mr. Mettle Nunoo chided party leadership and its entire executive body for turning a blind eye to the “most significant error” that contributed to their defeat. Describing it as one of their major weaknesses, he explained that the NPP had an upper hand as they persistently touted their leader as “incorruptible” and yet preached the opposite for their opponents, the NDC.
“People perceive that you are corrupt and you don’t deal with that perception, it spreads, and all you need is for someone to keep echoing it, that you’re corrupt, you’re corrupt, you’re corrupt. Now to present someone else as incorruptible, and you’re not able to attack that perception…..”, he said.
He maintained that there were several instances where the sitting President, Akufo-Addo at the time was accused of being involved in some judgement debts, a situation the NDC should have capitalized on to wipe the tag off their names. He even cited the recent cases of shady deals and transactions happening under President Akufo-Addo’s watch despite the fact that he promised Ghanaians to rid the country of corruption.
“Why, as Attorney General, the current President came under several judgement debt issues that he couldn’t manage, but the NDC couldn’t do much with that information”.
Even under six months of the current government, he said there will be no corruption under my watch. Six months down the road, we are seeing it happening, it’s unfolding”
Meanwhile. Mettle Nunoo revealed that former President John Mahama’s campaign team ignored critical findings by a research group in the party prior to the 2016 elections.
Rojo Mettle Nunoo said the former President Mahama and his campaign team dismissed crucial campaign intelligence provided by a team of experienced members of the party he led.
According to him, a survey his team conducted revealed the party’s 2016 campaign message was out of touch with the people and subsequently provided suggestions for messages that would resonate with the Ghanaian electorate.
“We did a 32,000 household survey across all the 10 regions of this country, identifying attitudes, behaviours, perceptions and desires of the people of Ghana,” he said.
The former Deputy Health Minister said the managers of the governing party’s campaign did not appear to want to hear contrary views because they believed they were winning.
He said even though the findings of the group were made available to the presidency at the time, “sometimes people want to hear what they want to hear.”
“I believe strongly that our message – our research data – was not accepted, it did not impact the strategy of the election and it was a disaster waiting the happen,”
Responding to the Mettle-Nunoo’s claims however, the NDC Deputy General Secretary; George Lawson said the revelation is news to him.
“I am not aware of what he is talking about...the President [John Mahama] is an individual,” he said to suggest that perhaps the said report was presented to the former President alone, but not the party leadership.
