Johnson Asiedu Nketia, the National Chairman of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), has offered a sharp critique of the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) newly adopted “top-down” approach for selecting its presidential candidate, linking it to the NPP’s own historical stance against a similar election structure in 1992.
Speaking in an interview with OkayFm’s Kwame Nkrumah Tikese monitored by Kumasimail, Asiedu Nketia stated he could only “bless” the NPP if the very approach they once vehemently resisted is now deemed good enough for their internal processes.
His comments come in the wake of the NPP National Council’s decision to elect its presidential candidate before any other internal elections.
The NDC Chairman prefaced his remarks with an unexpected definition of “madness,” which he then subtly applied to the NPP’s current strategy.
“Doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results is a formula for madness,” Asiedu Nketia explained.
“So sometimes you must think outside the box, it can be outside the box thinking is what NPP are doing,” he added.
He continued, drawing a direct parallel, “Because they started doing it from down to top, it didn’t work. So today, if leadership in the party think they will climb the tree from top to down, well, I can only bless them.”
Chairman General Asiedu Nketia then delved into Ghana’s electoral history, specifically the 1992 general elections, to highlight what he perceives as a significant contradiction in the NPP’s current position.
“What I see in this is that NPP, they don’t visit their own history,” he asserted.
“In 1992, the first election in Ghana was divided into two: presidential for 1st November and parliamentary for December.”
He recounted how, after Professor Albert Adu Boahen’s loss in the November presidential election, the NPP fiercely resisted participating in the December parliamentary polls.
“The NPP resisted, insisting, saying if you first elected presidential before parliamentary, it means you want to rig the election, so they won’t accept that. That led to their 1992 boycott of the election,” he explained.
The belief, according to Asiedu Nketia, was that if Jerry John Rawlings had won the presidential election, it would inevitably sway voters towards his parliamentary candidates, thereby rigging the entire process.
The NDC National Chairman expressed bewilderment at the NPP’s apparent change of heart regarding an approach they once deemed fundamentally flawed for national elections.
“If today some leaders are leading NPP and they say this top-down approach should be done internally, something they didn’t accept nationwide and resisted for it to be changed in 1996 elections,” he questioned.
He further challenged the NPP to verify their own history regarding electoral reforms.
“Go and check Electoral Commission records. Who proposed the idea of voting presidential and parliamentary on the same day? If not, where the presidential election will go, it will lead parliamentary elections to that same direction. Go and check, you will know it’s NPP that brought the suggestion.”
Asiedu Nketia concluded by emphasizing the irony stating “Something they resisted, it was bad, so won’t accept for it to be done nationwide. Today, they say it’s good, so they want to implement it in their party.”
Source : www.kumasimail.com /Kwadwo Owusu
