By Dennis Peprah
Odumase (B/R), May 15, GNA – The leadership and delegates of National Democratic Congress (NDC) have been commended for exhibiting high sense of political maturity in the just-ended presidential and parliamentary primaries of the Party.
Mr Mensah, a former organiser of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the then Brong-Ahafo Region gave the commendation in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on Monday at Odumase in the Sunyani West Constituency.
As the largest opposition Party, he said the credible, peaceful, and responsible manner the NDC conducted its primaries were indications “the Party has understood internal democracy which an index is to measure the country’s democratic gains”.
Mr Mensah therefore suggested the need for the leadership of the NPP to emulate by ensuring that parliamentary candidates were not imposed on the Party members.
Instead, the NPP must conduct credible parliamentary primaries for the delegates to make informed decisions and vote for competent candidates to contest the parliamentary seats in the Election 2024, he added.
The NDC successfully conducted its presidential and parliamentary primaries over the weekend, and overwhelmingly endorsed former President John Dramani Mahama as the Party’s 2024 flagbearer and elected other parliamentary candidates.
Though the Party could not conduct the parliamentary primaries in some constituencies due to pertinent internal challenges including Court injunctions placed on them, the primaries in general had received applause from critics and political pundits.
“The NPP must learn lessons” and ensure that a fair playing field would be given to particularly all aspirants contesting in impending NPP presidential and parliamentary primaries.
“In fact the NDC has proven critics wrong, and the Party’s successful primary elections are an indication that they are yearning to regain political power in the next general election”.
“This is telling us as NPP that if we are not careful and repeat the unpardonable mistakes in the election 2020 by forcibly imposing parliamentary candidates on our people, then we are heading for political doom”, Mr Mensah stated.
The former NPP organiser indicated the choice of the Party people remained paramount, if the NPP could recapture lost parliamentary seats and maintain the incumbent seats in the next general election, saying “we must also do our homework well”.
“As a strong Party under a great elephant which cherishes internal democracy, the NPP leadership must ensure that every qualified parliamentary aspirant is given the opportunity to contest in the Party primaries devoid of bias, skirmishes and unhealthy political considerations,” he stated.
“We cannot afford to allow some few people in the Party to decide our fate in the Election 2024 because that would be politically suicidal for us. We must strive hard and get the simple majority in parliament and if we do our homework well, we can regain many of the parliamentary seats, particularly our traditional seats we lost in 2020”, Mr Mensah added.
As a government in power, he said the NPP was strong enough not only to “break the eight,” but also win majority of the parliamentary seats, saying, “we need to do a lot, make the NPP more attractive for the masses to make informed decisions and vote for us in 2024”.
Mr Mensah said perceived political complacency and voter apathy threatened the fortunes of the Party’s victory in the election 2024.
He therefore made an urgent call to the leadership of the Party to ensure that various committees set up to investigate pertinent challenges pertaining to some constituencies would accelerate their work for the progress of the Party.
“Certain internal challenges which emanated during the last parliamentary elections in the Sunyani East, Jaman South, Berekum East, Sunyani West and Wenchi constituencies remained unresolved. The Party is going through other similar challenges in some constituencies nationwide and the leadership must be proactive enough to tackle those challenges before it is too late,” he added.
That notwithstanding, Mr Mensah appealed to disgruntled members and supporters of the Party to give peace a chance to prevail, saying “despite our differences, we must remember we are fighting a common enemy, the NDC on the political space in the Election 2024”.
GNA