Political Marketer and Lecturer at the Methodist University College of Ghana (MUCG), Dr. Bernard Tutu Boahen says the reason for the brutal flip of previously NPP parliamentary seats to its opposition is because, the party chose the wrong candidates at its primaries.
He said, the elections of parliamentary candidates in the various constituencies are done by a selected few in the party and sometimes, these elections do not reflect the choice of the party’s supporters. He said this causes agitation in the supporters of the party who then takes revenge on the party by voting against them in the general elections.
Dr. Bernard Tutu sighted the high attrition rate of seated Members of Parliament in the party who were seeking to contest for re-election on the party’s ticket, as another factor for the party’s loss in the number of parliamentary seats in the general election.
“I’m not really surprise in terms of the outcome of the presidential and parliamentary elections. As it were, you could see the primaries of the NPP, what happened there and what we are seeing in the national elections is a true reflection of what happened at the NPP primaries.
“Over there, you could see as many as 41 incumbent seats were lost and people started talking about it and objecting to certain decisions that were taken prior to the primaries. So, you could see that going into this particular election, a kind of anger was with the people.
“Let me take this opportunity to make this point; when you have a system where few people will determine who contest for national seats, it’s a problem…. What I have realized over the years is the fact that, the views of the few delegates do not have a national appeal. So, if you are not careful, you go in to make a choice… and the people get in there and turn against them.”
Dr. Samuel Adu Gyamfi, a Historian, also to a large extent agreed with the analysis made by Dr. Tutu. He added that for him, one major cause of the big loss of the NPP in the parliamentary race is because “the internal democratic arrangement of the NPP is questionable.”
He indicated that, the party shields some members of the party when they fault or under perform as Members of Parliament, an act that does not sit well with the voters.
He also alleged that, most candidates who contested the parliamentary seats of the various constituencies in the party’s primaries bribed the Electoral College of the party into winning the candidature.
“Money exchanged hands; how the Electoral College took money from those who contested and how they managed to also shove some people aside, this has become telling on our democracy and is a shame on Ghana,” he stated.
