The Communications Director of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akomea, believes that the mere fact that former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings has opened up to contest President Atta Mills for the flagbearership position of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) is a clear sign of no confidence in the President and his administration.
“It means that inside the NDC itself, there is significant numbers who do not believe that the President is delivering on the ‘Better Ghana’ agenda,” he said. He was of the conviction that “the vote of no confidence is so big that it is manifesting in a direct challenge of the President”.
Nana Akomea, who is also the sitting Member of Parliament (MP) for Okaikoi South, was speaking with Daily Guide about unfolding events in the ruling party which has virtually divided the NDC into two interest groups, the Mills and the Konadu camps.
He has asked Ghanaians to take a cue from this vote of no confidence in the President by none but his own party members to show him and the NDC red card come December 2012 when they go to the polls to elect a President.
In spite of this, he thinks that under the current circumstance, President Mills stands a better chance than the wife of the NDC’s founder since in his opinion “the odds are really stark against her.”
This, according to him, was because the electoral arrangement that the NDC had favoured what he called the ‘machine,’ the office holders (national executives, council of elders, ministers, MPs, MMDCEs) in the party and that it did not give much room for none office holders at the grassroots level (foot soldiers) to participate in it.
For this reason, he said the President could manipulate the voting pattern by making new appointments for his favourites to go and vote for him on congress day.
Though there is an existing clause in the Constitution of the NDC which makes provision for each constituency to submit a list of 10 voters to elect a flagbearer, Nana Akomea believed the 10 would invariably be composed from the constituency office holders or the executives since each and every one of them would want to go and vote.
As it is, he said, “It is confined mainly to office holders, constituency executives, regional executives, ministers of state, MMDCEs, council of elders and so on” and “it is dominated by machine politics; office holders, the status quo…that’s what dominates the NDC’s electoral process”.
He believes that if Konadu indeed wanted to win the impending primaries, what she and her strategists should have done was for them to have pushed for the introduction of reforms in the Electoral College like the NPP did to allow the grassroots to also participate.
As it stands now, the Communications Director for the NPP foresees NDC foot-soldiers embarking on a series of agitations across the constituencies to demand voting rights since they constitute the support base of the Rawlingses.
He harbours the fear that this could further lead to more turmoil in the already-boiling NDC. Mrs. Rawlings and her supporters however remain unperturbed by some of these analogies since they believe they have done enough to secure her the bid.
