A member of the Dr. Kwabena Duffuor campaign team, Lateef Appau Wiredu, has provided evidence to water down the assertion of the former president of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, that he is the party’s best option to win the election 2024.
According to him, what the available data shows is that Mahama is rather the weakest link of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), going into the impending elections.
Speaking in a radio interview in reaction to statements by the former president that he is the best candidate for the NDC, Lateef Wiredu sought to understand how it is that in the two previous elections that he led the NDC into, they recorded their worst-ever numbers.
“If we dig into it, Mahama became president in 2012 after the death of Atta Mills. He run against Akufo-Addo and won and then he went again in 2016. In fact, the 20212 election was Atta Mills’ election but he died. So, it was the works of Atta Mills and sympathy votes that won him 2012.
“On his own, in 2016, also against Akufo-Addo, after the election, the vote difference was 1 million; which had never happened in Ghana before. In 2020, they again won the election by 500,000 margin and that had also never happened before. The second highest defeat the NDC has suffered was in the 2020 elections, with the first in 2016 – all with the candidate President John Mahama.
“So, if we are going into 2024 and you say the NPP government that has thrashed you in two successive elections, you are the only one in the NDC they fear, we don’t agree. This is also because in 2020, Ghanaians really wanted to give the nod to the NDC,” he said.
Lateef Appau Wiredu further broke down what he believes makes the campaign by John Dramani Mahama a failed one, using the Central Region, for instance, as an example.
He stressed that, with the performance of the NDC in the Central Region in 2016 and 2020, it cannot be said with factual certainty that Mahama is their best bet for the crucial elections of 2024.
“… in 2020 John Mahama’s slogan was that he was the surest bet, which is the same as he is saying today.
“Let’s look at the Central Region for instance, because that’s where we got our running mate from, in 2016, when we lost the elections, we won only four constituencies: presidential and parliamentary elections. The NPP won 19. When we went into 2020, the NDC won 13 parliamentary seats in the Central Region, while the NPP won 10, but for presidential, Akufo-Addo retained the 19, with John Mahama retaining his 4,” he added.
He also described how, for instance, the available data has shown that, especially in the 2020 general elections, Ghanaians voted more for Members of Parliament candidates of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), than they did for the party’s presidential candidate.
He added that it can only be a figment of John Mahama's imagination to still believe that he is the one to give the NDC its anticipated victory in 2024 when the data works against him.
“If you analyse it, in 118 constituencies around the country, our parliamentary candidates had more votes than John Mahama. A case in point is Muntaka’s constituency of Asawase. Muntaka had over 61,000 votes, while Mahama had 47, 000. If you go to Haruna Iddrisu’s constituency, Tamale South, the differences in votes for Haruna Iddrisu and John Mahama in 2020, was over 12,199…
“In 118 constituencies, Ghanaians were voting for our parliamentary candidates than our presidential candidate… the available data doesn’t suggest that. All that he has been saying are in his head just to make himself feel good… to me, he is rather our weakest point to winning power,” he explained.
The NDC presidential primaries is slated for May 13, 2023, with three candidates in the race: Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, a former Minister of Finance; Kojo Bonsu, a former Mayor of Kumasi; and John Dramani Mahama, Ghana’s former president.
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The leading candidates in the NDC presidential primaries race