The Director of Elections of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, has intimated that the party failed to properly address the allegations of its member having sexual relations with actress Tracey Boakye.
According to him, some members of the party knew that the allegation that former President John Dramani Mahama had sexual relations with Tracey Boakye, which was coined “Papano”, was false, but they kept quiet about it.
This, he said, allowed the New Patriotic Party to use the allegation against the former president to their advantage, which could have probably affected his fortunes in the 2020 election.
“One thing that makes me sad when I remember it is the ‘Papano’ allegation that came up two months before the 2020 elections. During that time, I was busy with preparation for the election and I kept hearing and seeing videos of all kinds of allegations against President John Dramani Mahama.
“It was after the election that I came to know that people in the party knew that the issues being discussed in the public about President Mahama's buying a house for a woman had nothing to do with him. They (the party members) knew the person who bought the house and fathered a child with the woman.
“So, why didn’t we come out strongly? Why? How could we allow this to stand… The truth must always prevail. We are in politics and you must not sit down for people to continue spreading lies about us,” he said in Twi in an XYZ TV interview monitored by GhanaWeb.
Afriyie Ankrah, a former minister of sports, reiterated that the party should have handled the issue appropriately because not every voter could have analysed that the ‘Papano’ allegation was propaganda against Mahama.
He added that even analytical people could have believed that allegation because they were not presented with the truth.
