NDC needs a two-term capacity flagbearer for 2024—Moshake

In the wake of the seeming factional crack between the elders of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the Executive leadership of the party, depicted in the two sides holding separate fora on the future of the party over the weekend, an Executive of the Tema East branch of the party has issued a clarion call.

Mr. Stephen Ashitey Adjei, alias Moshake, through the latest of his epistles to the party called for the election of a Presidential Candidate who will be clothed with the constitutional permit to run for more than one term.

“2024 presents us with the opportunity to initiate new beginnings for the NDC and its future; we must not make the mistake of electing someone who has a short-term capacity to be President. We should aim for the long haul – NDC needs a two-term capacity Flagbearer for 2024,” Mr. Ashitey Adjei wrote.

Even though he did not name names, the advice appears to urge the party base to wean itself of former President John Mahama who has had three stints as Flagbearer of the NDC and led the NDC to victory in only one.

After winning the 2012 election, Mahama has subsequently led the NDC to its worst defeat in 2016 when the party lost the Presidential election by almost 1million votes.

Again in 2020, the NDC under the Mahama Candidature lost by over 500,000 votes to the NPP’s Nana Akufo-Addo.

According to Moshake, the reduction in the NDC’s loss margin from 1million in 2016 to 500,000 in 2020 means that, “people are still in love with the NDC but are not really happy with the party’s Candidate. This is the voter telling us that we need a fresh leader; a leader that will carry the party for at least one decade.”

He adds that, “we must respond; we must show the whole world that the claim that the NDC does not have the men and women is the figment of people’s imagination. We must introduce the next face of our party to the demanding voter in 2024.”

According to Moshake, “already, we have chipped away this myth that we do not have the men through the Speaker of the 8^th Parliament, Rt. Hon. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin,” adding, “it is a shame that some from within our party are busily attacking him.”

Moshake’s epistle comes in the wake of some elders of the NDC snubbing a retreat held in Ho by the leadership of the NDC, led by former President Mahama. While Mr. Mahama, his 2020 Running Mate, Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang and other Executives of the party were in Ho retreating, elders of the party held another forum in Tema on the future of the party.

It was at this Tema function that respected elders of the party like Dr. Benjamin Kumbuor, a former Defense Minister and Mr. Dan Abodakpi, a former Agric Minister who also went to jail for the party, spoke.

Mr. Abodakpi would later dominate headlines with his observation that the NDC under Mahama has become a huge elephant with clay feet.

Around this same time, Alistair Tahiru Nelson, a member of the NDC also attacked the Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Alban Bagbin, accusing him of not helping the party with his new position.

According to Moshake, the attacks on Bagbin are unfortunate, “Alistair of course lacks political maturity, these sort of attacks only follow the culture shock that suddenly developed in our party when Mahama was President; when young people in our party begun insulting elders of the party.”

He wrote that, “I think the time has come for whoever is behind these attacks to stop sponsoring them. Personally, I do not want to believe that Hon. Bagbin is being attacked by minions of those who want to remain in the leadership of the party because they fear that Bagbin may still have Presidential ambitions. But if this is the case, then what a shame!

“And may it not be true, the rumours making the rounds, that a certain Mr. Ibrahim Mahama is also involved in the sponsorship of such attacks because he wants his brother to become President again so he can have big State contracts,” Moshake wrote.