[ad_1]
The New Patriotic Party (PNP) has finally been declared the winner of the 2020 presidential elections. The victory, although resounding, offers the opportunity for the elephant fraternity to reconsider its internal and external strategies for future elections, especially the 2024 general elections. .
The seemingly uniform distribution of power between the party and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in Ghana’s eighth parliament clearly demonstrates the urgent need for the party to redefine and reshape its political strategies.
Most importantly, the reduction of the PNP margin in the Ashanti and Eastern regions in particular shows a growing apathy in the party stronghold.
In fact, except in the Adansi Asokwa constituency, where the PNP made significant gains in the number of votes (around 5%), there were absolute reductions in the number of voters polled by the party in its stronghold.
For example, in 2016, NPP won 76.3% in the Ashanti region, but it fell to 71.6% in 2020. Surprisingly, the NDC magically won a sizable number of votes (26.1%), which is higher than its 2016 share (23%) within the NPP stronghold. Similar trends were also observed in the eastern region.
These events in the 2020 elections, in general and in the Ashanti region in particular, require urgent attention from the party leaders, to remedy the situation and find lasting solutions, capable of ensuring the victory of the party in the next elections.
One could argue that participation in the region may explain the elephant party’s decline in votes. While this argument may be true to some extent, it is overruled by the increase in the number of votes for the NDC.
There is clear evidence of apathy among party members in the region and especially at the grassroots, as evidenced by the declining trend in voting throughout the region. Multiple factors can explain the declining performance of the party in the region in particular, and the country in general.
The monetization incidences of the party’s primaries contributed greatly to the outcome of the elections. It is important to note that delegates alone do not constitute the voting population within the party. Therefore, if candidates fight their way into the primaries by paying huge sums of money to delegates, they may not automatically seal their victory in the general election.
The monetization of the primaries is reinforced by the imposition of candidates on party members by high-ranking party members in electoral, regional and national districts. In some cases, there was resistance from party members in certain electoral districts, who threatened to vote in a skirt and blouse if candidates were imposed from above.
This should have sent a clear and strong signal to the party leaders, to hear the voice of the people, whose votes are critical to the party’s victory. However, the most powerful forces of the party cruelly ignored the feelings of the people, who undoubtedly were the ones who decided the outcome of the party’s presidential and parliamentary elections.
Another contributing factor is observable complacency among some of the party’s leaders, including members of parliament, regional and local executives. Certainly, the policies and programs of the government led by Akufo Addo, especially the free SHS, gained popularity among most of the society.
However, some of them had a preconceived idea that the popularity of the free SHS and the dominance of the party in the region were reasons enough to seal and guarantee their victory. Hence, their constituency-level turnout and popularity declined, even before the elections, while the NDC massively capitalized on that to increase its share of the votes in the region.
As a stronghold of the NPP party, residents in the region, and party members in particular, want to see a correlation between the party’s dominance and a corresponding increase in its development initiatives and projects in the region. This correlation, if observable, can cause an increase in party dominance in the region while reducing apathy among party loyalists.
However, there were mixed feelings among sectors of party members who perceived that the party had taken the region in general and their communities in particular for granted. Looking ahead, the 2024 elections must be won by the elephant fraternity and the sooner the party corrects its mistakes, the better for its victory.
Therefore, it will be very important to gain a deeper understanding of these and other factors through grassroots field research.
–
Data source: https://ghanaelections.peacefmonline.com/pages/2020/
The author, Peter Asare-Nuamah, PhD is an independent researcher and social commentator.
Email: [email protected]
