The party of the ruling government, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), would hold its presidential primaries across the country on Saturday, November 4th, 2023, where delegates of the party would select one out of the four aspirants to lead the party in the 2024 General Elections as the flagbearer.
From the initial ten distinguished party loyalists who put themselves up for the sole position, four stalwarts, namely Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, Francis Addai Nimo and Dr. Afriyie Akoto, have remained.
It would be expected that a total of 203,439 delegates across the country would cast their votes for one candidate or the other at designated polling centres in all the 16 regions on Saturday, to elect the party’s 2024 presidential candidate.
Prior to Saturday’s final showdown, two of the known faces in the race, Boakye Kyeremateng Agyarko and Allan Kwadwo Kyerematen, bowed out of the race, citing various infractions as their reasons.
It would be recalled that Mr. Boakye Kyeremateng Agyarko, who had a tie with Mr. Addai Nimo and, therefore, had to go for a run-off, raised concerns over a sudden change in the modalities to conduct a run-off.
According to Mr. Agyarko, an attempt was made to circumvent the provisions in the party’s constitution and guidelines for conducting a run-off, as far as the Super Delegates Conference was concerned, and willingly stepped down due to his concerns.
Meanwhile, Mr. Kyerematen also withdrew from the competition and accused the leadership of strategically and tactically skewing the processes just to favour a particular aspirant.
He eventually resigned from the party with an assertion that his polling agents were brutally assaulted, particularly in the North East Region, where his agent, during the elections, suffered severe damage to his eye, following an attack on him.
It is in the light of this, and other circumstances, that The Chronicle is particularly concerned about Saturday’s presidential primaries, and wants to draw the party’s attention to the need to put in the necessary measures to make the polls incident-free.
As a matter of fact, the party cannot let itself down at this crucial time, where all eyes are on the NPP to see how the party would rise to the occasion and effectively manage its crucial internal elections, because coming events, they say, cast their shadows.
However, the point remains that Ghana has chosen to practice multi-party democracy with its accompanying tenets, features, and characteristics, which mainly evolve around the formation of political parties to contest elections.
This explains why the activities of the political parties, both in government and opposition, continue to be a matter of interest to every Ghanaian who is concerned about the sustenance of our cherished democracy.
Additionally, as a party that wants to win the trust of the electorate so that it can continue to stay in power, there is no gainsaying that what happens during its presidential primaries cannot have no bearing on how the general public must view it, ahead of a general election.
It is in the light of this that we call on the hierarchy of the party to, as a matter of urgency, put in place all the needed arrangements, with regards to tight security, and also spell out the modalities of the conduct of the elections to all the aspirants and their followers.
In our view, any form of security arrangements at any polling centre on the day must be handed to the police especially as all form of political vigilante groups and associations have been banned.
Ghana’s 31 years’ enviable record of being the beacon of hope as far as democracy in the sub region is concerned had been hinged on the principles of multi-party democratic values but not a one party state.
This means that any political party desirous of the will of the people to win political power to form a government must first of all demonstrate its understanding of the principles of democracy through its internal election process.
Violence of any form during internal elections could adversely affect the fortunes of the party, especially in a highly contested political space like ours, where non-aligned electorate consider a lot of factors before they cast their votes.
The NPP must also go all out on Saturday to uphold the tenets of democracy in its internal party elections.
