Former Member of Parliament for Assin Central, Hon. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, has made a passionate appeal to leadership of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to ensure fairness and transparency in the ongoing preparation towards the flag-bearership race as the party prepares for the 2028 general elections.
Speaking at a Capacity Building Conference by TESCON-KsTU, the maverick politician emphasized the importance of a level playing field, warning that any perceived manipulation or bias would create disunity within the party and dent its chances of winning back power.
He argued that, the recent internal reforms introduced by the party leadership to elect its flagbearer before other internal elections would lead to growing internal frustrations which he says, intend to favor one candidate.
“The right thing must be done, people were not happy and did not go out there to vote, we claim that its our own party people who refused to go and vote, so why are we taking decisions that will annoy them again not to come and vote ? Do we really want to come back to power ? The power belongs to all of us, it is not one person’s ambition, it is not one person’s wish, it is collective. I’m pleading with everyone to come on board but there should be fairness” he said.
Meanwhile, Professor of Finance and Economics at the University of Ghana, Professor Godfred A. Bokpin has recommended to the party to critically examine its present internal election approach for its not the best.
According to him, the procedure to elect a flagbearer before completing elections for other leadership positions at the lower levels would affect the unity and strength of the party ahead of the next polls.
“The little I know about Ghana’s politics is that, when it comes to democratic principles, we look to the NPP and how they’ve done it over the years in terms of building the party. A strong party with its structures is most likely to deliver a strong leader that can take them to the next elections.
“I have not followed it closely, but it looks to me that they want to do it the other way round. They now want to elect the flagbearer before they go through the process of electing the other leaders at the lower level.”
He added, “I am not too sure this will work for the party… whether the current leadership from national to regional to polling station level actually resonate with the grassroots so that we can rely on those ones to choose the flagbearer for us. You may use the law to justify this path, but anytime you want to use the law purely to solve every problem, you may miss out on so many things.
“Your constitution may allow you to do this, but I think you should reflect broadly to ensure that whoever is elected is actually popular within the party, and the party structures can work with the person. There is a certain suspicion, I could be wrong, that perhaps this may be done to work to the advantage of a candidate whose popularity may decline if the process takes longer.”
