Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia is the answer to the question the New Patriotic Party has spent years searching for, the political holy grail of becoming the first party in Ghanaian political history to win three consecutive terms in office.
In recent times, the party has made it clear that their goal for the upcoming 2024 elections is to do what has never been done in Ghanaian politician history and maintain power beyond the normal eight-year window.
Ghanaians have firmly established this cycle, particularly since multiparty rule returned in 1992, of giving each of the two major parties, the NDC and the NPP, eight years to rule and then jettison them for their opponents.
The NDC enjoyed their first 8 from 1992 to 2000 under the late Flight Lt Jerry John Rawlings.
John Agyekum Kuffour and the NPP took over for the next eight years before the NDC once again regained the 8 with a four-year term each for the late Professor Mills, which was continued by the former President John Dramani Mahama after the late President’s demise.
The NPP are in the second iteration of the eight, with Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo currently in power until his second term ends in 2024.
With the elections fast approaching, the NPP needs more than a miracle to break the 8. Ghana is facing unprecedented hardship, triggered by external factors such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict and COVID-19, but that bears little comfort for the struggling ordinary Ghanaian.
The fact is that people are suffering and to ask them to maintain the government under which they’re seeing all this suffering is more than a tall task. In fact, it requires a miracle.
Why Bawumia Is A Godsend
To perform a miracle, you need a Messiah. Not the son of God necessarily, but someone who can help you accomplish what hitherto looked impossible.
Dr Bawumia is that figure for the NPP, and he is that for one major reason.
Bawumia helps address the biggest question mark people have about the NPP, something that reared its ugly head in recent days – the perceived tribal nature of the party’s politics.
The NPP is perceived as a party for Akans, with the party having its two main factions as the Ashantis and the Akyems – represented by the Danquah-Busia factions, with help from the Northern People’s Party represented by Chief S.K Dombo.
Whilst the party has won power by drawing votes from other regions, particularly the mostly cosmopolitan Greater Accra, Central and Western Regions, its power base has always been the Ashanti and Eastern Regions.
That has created a perception of the NPP as an exclusive, elitist party, one that is for not just a certain ‘class’ of people but for a group of people with a certain lineage.
Hopeson Adorye, a huge supporter of the Alan Kyeremanten for President campaign, made this very point recently in a very ugly moment that has stained the Alan ‘Cash’ Presidential campaign.
According to Hopeson Adorye, the NPP flagbearer position is only for people from the Danquah/Busia camp and that Northerners are only good for being running mates – a clear jab at Dr Bawumia.
“There is one thing I am going to say. The NPP has a tradition. Our tradition is Busia, Danquah and Dombo. Danquah represents Eastern Region and the bottom (south), Busia represents Ashanti Region and the Bono areas, while Dombo represents Northern Region,” Hopeson Adorye said to participants of a walk in Kumasi dubbed a “Walk for Alan.”
He continued: “Whenever a Dankwa leads the party, the Busia side step aside but there is a Dombo (for running mate), and whenever a Busia lead, the Dankwa side step aside but there is a Dombo (for running mate). As for the Dombos they are always there (for running mate).”
The comment fuelled the NPP’s exclusivist reputation and would politically hurt the party among a lot of voters who might feel such a narrow-looking tradition does not merit being rewarded.
What better way to ward off this political iceberg than by nominating and presenting a candidate to Ghanaians who is completely out of this tradition?
Dr Mahamudu Bawumia presents the NPP a chance to make a completely fresh start, to make a case to Ghanaians that they are choosing the best candidate available in their ranks and not just any candidate who ticks a box as coming from faction A or faction B, as Hopeson Adorye would like the party to do.
As the NPP seeks to do what has never been done in Ghanaian history – to break the 8 – they might also need to do something that has never been done in NPP political history to accomplish it.
Source: theGhanaianVoice.Com
