They say it is not over until it is over.??That is very true particularly when it comes to political parties preparing for elections.??Even though a lot of supporters in the NPP are beating their chests that now that the party has been able to elect a flagbearer in a peaceful manner chapters have been closed, I beg to differ.??There is yet one chapter which is widely opened and that is the issue of electing?Parliamentary candidates for the party in the run-up to the 2016 elections.??Set aside for the moment, Nana Addo?s landslide victory and the nationwide jubilation that followed.??Help me rather to concentrate on the election of Parliamentary candidates for election 2016.
Experience has shown that apathy and division?crop into the NPP after the election of Parliamentary candidates.??In 2012 some constituencies formed groups like ?Yeresee Mu? to clandestinely campaign against candidates who won the primaries simply because their preferred candidates lost at the primaries. This ?Yeresee Mu? group went around telling the electorate to vote for Nana Addo but reject the party?s?Parliamentary candidates.??In fact,?they opened the cupboards of candidates and brought out skeletons for the NDC to see. You ask yourself why Nana Addo was able to garner five million votes and Mahama had the same five million votes but?had only three hundred votes extra to become the President of Ghana???Do you think if we had gone to the election as a united force, Atuguba would have been the one to choose a President for twenty five million Ghanaians? At the same time try to ask yourself why so many NPP Parliamentary candidates in many constituencies lost their bid to enter Parliament while Nana Addo won in those constituencies???Ask yourself again why people voted ?skirt and blouse??that is, voting for Nana but voting against their Parliamentary candidates?
This unhealthy attitude seriously affected the chances of the NPP.???We had a group called ?Agenda 2016??in the NPP, whose main objective was to stay apathetic during the campaign so that Nana would lose the election for their preferred candidate to lead the party in 2016.??If you observed very well, some of these ?Agenda 2016? people were seldom seen at the Supreme Court when the three gentlemen took the case to the apex court.??They subtly popped Champaign when the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Bantama Akwasi Boakye Mahama, who is dragging the economy into the mud while his cohorts feed on the blood of the poor Ghanaian worker.
The gospel truth is that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is smarter than the New Patriotic Party (NPP) when it comes to electing Parliamentary candidates.??If Sanja Nanja, a Konkomba man, and Alhaji Mohammed, a Dagomba man, could become MPs in the Brong-Ahafo Region then the time has come for the NPP to think again when the time comes for the election of Parliamentary candidates.??There is this Dagate woman who sells pito in one of the districts in the Ashanti Region who is a?government appointee at the District Assembly.??This woman is a stack illiterate who has never attended any school since she was born some sixty years ago.??Curiosity took me to where her pito bar was and what I saw made me understand why the NDC made her a government appointee.
On the walls, windows and doors of her pito bar were nothing but posters of Professor John Atta Mills, Jerry John Rawlings, John Mahama and the NDC MP for the constituency.??I learnt the reason why she was made a government appointee was that she uses her base to campaign for the NDC and sometimes gives her customers pito for free if they speak good about the NDC.??To test her intelligence and knowledge of the district assembly concept, I asked her to tell me the name of the elected assemblyman of her area and this was what she had to say: ?Enye J.J. Rawlings!???(Is it not J.J. Rawlings?)??Don?t laugh because the matter is serious.??And this is a person who would be voting in 2016 to elect a President for you and me!
The NPP leadership tends to place so much premium on qualifications more than the people who can win seats for the party.?The NDC does not care whether one is educated or not.??If only you can help them win the seat, so be it.??That is why today J.J. Rawlings is the assemblyman of the electoral area where my friend the Dagate pito seller lives.??The NDC people know very well that if they appoint an Asante man as a Municipal Chief Executive of Yendi, hell will break loose but they also know that if they appoint a Kusasi or a Dagomba man as an MCE or DCE in the Ashanti Region no one will spit fire.??In the Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo Regions, the NDC leadership make sure where tenant farmers from the north are in the majority, they present a northerner?as a Parliamentary candidate; and in many instances these candidates win. Even when the Paramount Chief of Atebubu kicked against the Parliamentary candidacy of Sanja Nanja, he went ahead to win the seat for the NDC while Cassius Osei Poku of the NPP who had been a two-time DCE and an indigene of Amanten in the Atebubu District lost to almighty Sanja.?The reason is that even though Atebubu is in the Brong-Ahafo Region, a greater number of the residents are tenant farmers from the north and fisher folks from the Volta Region.
When Parliamentary primaries of the NPP are opened, it is there that you will see ?buggers? who are interested in the various seats.??By ?buggers? I mean NPP members who all along have been living abroad.??These people come along with their dollars and introduce ?moneycracy? into the system and so no matter how popular you are, the delegates will collect money and vote for the ?bugger?.??In case the ?bugger? loses the election, he will fly back to where he came from to enjoy the good things of life while we stay back home and suffer like we are doing today under the John Mahama monstrous regime of create, loot and share.
The NPP religiously practise democracy like the way the Taliban extremists?practise Islam in Afghanistan.???People in the NPP have refused to accept the fact that consensus building is part of democracy.??It is not everything that should be put into vote simply because we are practising democracy.??The universal word is compromise.??Sometimes we have to look into the face of an aspirant and tell the person to give way to a particular aspirant and bid his time for the rainy day.??Constituency executive members should avoid monetary inducements and help the party get winnable candidates for 2016.??It is an open secret that when nominations open, these constituency executive members are approached by people who are interested in the various seats with money to help them edge out other contestants.
The expansion of the Electoral College has been so beneficial to the party this time and I hope it will work yet another magic when nominations for Parliamentary candidate positions open.??In the run-up to the NPP National Delegates? Congress recently to elect a flagbearer, the soul of ?moneycracy? was bruised badly.??There was this aspirant who met delegates from three constituencies at a particular venue and after the usual sweet talk, he donated GH?10,000 to the nearly two thousand delegates assembled as their T&T.??That day hell broke loose because when they decided to share the cash some got GH?5 while others got GH?2.??The delegates were so angry that they all decided to vote against the aspirant because the money he gave them could not take them back to their villages.??One delegate was heard asking this rhetorical question: ?Can GH?2 make you a flagbearer???Tweaa!???Prior to the expansion of the Electoral College only ten Constituency members would have shared that amount.??Times have changed.
We have some NPP Parliamentarians who have performed so well that getting them out of Parliament will be a disservice to both the party and the country as a whole.??Instead of new faces contesting them, we should rather pool resources and work together to make sure they win and win big.??A political party in opposition is not like the one in power. That was why Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah told Ghanaians when the NDC lost power in 2000 that ?opposition is hell?.?The time has come for those who are resourceful??in the party to contribute generously to the war chest, not only at the national level but also at the constituency level.??There is no time to lose.??Ghanaians have missed the NPP and they are yearning for a change but change will come at a cost.
One of the best top ten cigars in the world is Montecristo Edmundo.??It has lived up to expectation as a top quality Cuban.??Its Mexican Cubano wrappers are loaded with all the bitter sweetness you expect from Monte.??The Edmundo winds smoothly and slowly into satisfying finish.??A good old friend sent me a full box of Montecristo from Havana where he has sojourned for the past three decades. Excuse me while I light up.
?By?Eric Bawah
