NDC Putting Future On The Line With Mahama Return

Come Saturday, if there is no last minute Nigeria-like postponement, the NDC will be going to congress to elect a flagbearer ahead of the 2020 elections. Of the people contesting, Former President Mahama, 2^nd Deputy Speaker Alban Bagbin and Former VC of UPS Joshua Alabi are considered the frontrunners.

Many political connoisseurs are of the view that the former president holds the edge due to his influence as a former President of Ghana even though almost every neutral to have made such a prediction allude to the fact that a change is the best option for the party.

Looking at the history of the Fourth Republic and more significantly the result of the 2016 elections, President Mahama’s image on the ballot paper in the name of NDC again will spell doom for the party.

With JM 2020, the future of the NDC is going to be on the line with an immature mistake that should never be made by a party that has held power constitutionally for 16 years.

At every point in time, the interest of an institution should be paramount and every personal interest made secondary. Those who’d be voting for JM know very well that they are serving the interests of an individual over the corporate and this is why such a decision won’t auger well for a party that fought so hard to wean itself off the Rawlings-Party tag before being considered an established independent political institution.

Ditching Rawlings and jumping onto another individual to represent the soul of the party is a regression and that is what it means when you elect a candidate who lost by almost a million votes even while in power to lead the party again even with other qualified and arguably better candidates available to take the party to the next level.

Whichever way you look at it, Bagbin, Alabi and Spio represent better candidates with better social capital than the former president.

Imagine President Mahama in his campaign, promising students allowance on his return, are Ghanaians going to believe in his message? Indeed, I will take any candidate who makes such promise a joke but the point is that you need a trustworthy candidate if you want to win the elections and Mahama has lost that.

When people vote you out, it means they have had enough of you and want you out when the difference is a few thousand to one million in a voting population less than 15 million, then you are really considered a goat very well dead.

Bringing the same person back really defeats the quality of human resource at its disposal.

Bagbin and Alabi and Spio are as good as any top politician in this country and capable of mounting a challenge against anyone presented by the NPP in 2020 and 2024. All of them are at strategic stages in their lives that when the party makes the mistake of missing them, it’d be difficult to present one their stature in future.

If the NDC presents Mahama in 2020, they are going to lose and he will definitely come seeking the same favour in 2024 and the result won’t change.

All the people going to vote for Mahama are doing it with the hope that the NPP does worse and get Ghanaians to the point where JM’s record will be deemed a success only realised with hindsight.

This is the truth, Ghanaians will prefer giving Nana a second crack at fixing the economy than JM whose the only answer to the challenge was Seth Tekper.

You see, the problem with JM and his shortcomings as a president also has a lot to do with the people he worked with and it remains a fact that most of these people are still super close to him and very likely to form the core of his government in the unlikely event he becomes president again.

Swing voters know this, they know that such a team, one that saw almost a 100% depreciation of the Cedi to the dollar and same to inflation cannot fix the economy.

Change is the only forward for the NDC and it is not possible with Mahama leading. At this stage, any credible face on the party’s ticket is a step forward: when it comes in the form of Bagbin, Alabi or even Spio, then it’s a masterstroke.

Ghana’s democracy needs a stronger and competitive NDC that can be trusted to improve on the NPP regardless of how Nana’s performance is measured by the voting populace in 4 or 8 years’ time.

No serious person expects such improvement to come in the shape Mahama because in truth, much hasn’t changed even after the 2016 statement from Ghanaians.

If he couldn’t pull a runoff as sitting President, he cannot do any better as a standing ex-president or opposition leader.

Isaac Kyei Andoh