Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Monday, April 10, 2017
Dr Benjamin Kunbour, former Defence Minister, has pointed
out that he knew the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) government
would lose the December 7, 2016 elections.
He said the signs of defeat were similar to what happened in
1999/2000 when the then opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) defeated the NDC
in the 2000 polls.
“It was possible you could see that defeat was coming
because anyone who has been around from 1999/2000 could see a symmetry between
the developments that were taking place, particularly a year or a-year-and-a-half
in the runoff to the elections,” he underscored on GHOne TV's ‘State of Affairs’ programme recently.
Mahama
Floored
In last year’s election,
the NPP’s candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, made sure that then President
John Dramani Mahama’s dream of a re-election did not become a reality by knocking
him (Mahama) out with 5,716,026 votes (representing 53.85%), while Mr. Mahama
secured 4,713,277 votes (44.40%).
As if that was not enough, the NDC entered
into the current political dispensation as minority in parliament with only 104
seats as against the NPP’s 171- having snatched some 49 seats from the former.
Self-Introspection
Dr. Kunbour, who was once indicted by the
police for firing bullets inside his own vehicle but claimed it was an
assassination attempt, said some leading members of the NDC also knew that the
party was opposition-bound.
“I
spent a bit of my quiet time doing some analysis and I must say at that time, I
was a bit frightened about the parallels and similarities of 1999 and 2000
which eventually led to our electoral defeat at that time. So there was cause
for worry at that time,” he admitted.
According
to him, the worsening graduate unemployment, leading to increase in membership
of the Ghana Unemployed Graduates Association, as well as the austerity measures
directed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), were all factors for the
NDC’s defeat.
External Environment
“The
external environment, you don’t always control it. Externally, we had gone into
an IMF package which the consequences were of very high level austerity. The
austerity hit directly at our constituency,” he maintained, adding, “There is
no way that with the global unemployment, particularly youth unemployment you
have in this country, that will not become an election issue.
“In the peculiar case of Ghana, I saw the percentage of
graduate unemployment reach an astronomical level to the extent that an
association of unemployed graduates had to be formed to articulate these
concerns… and that clearly mirrors what exactly was going on in the country.
There were many more but they all fed into the package,” he noted.
Dr. Kunbour, who was once majority leader in parliament,
pointed out, “There is no way you can run austerity in this part of the world
of an emerging economy in which hardship cannot be wished away. And because you
are incumbent, it becomes difficult. You can’t say as we take this major step,
this is going to be the outcome. It becomes easier for your opponent. They
simply look at it and because they have no responsibility at the time, they
make a very clear statement so there is no attempt at rationalising the state
of the economy. They were in a relative comfort zone.”
Early
Congress
Dr Benjamin Kunbour, former Lawra/Nandom (NDC) Member of
Parliament (MP), has noted that it would be in the interest of the party to
hold early congress to select a presidential candidate for the 2020 election.
Without directly passing a vote of no confidence in
ex-President Mahama - who is tipped to return as the NDC candidate - or the current
executives of the party, the former minister said, “A party that has suffered
this level of defeat with so much internal acrimony and internal pain still in
the mind, if we could not take eight years to galvanise that into an electoral
victory, I don’t see how we can do that within one year or one-and-a-half
years.”
He said on Class FM
in Accra last Thursday that the current constitutional arrangement of the party
should not be adhered to strictly since the time for electing a flag bearer would
be too close to the 2020 general election.
“…Given all the preparations that are involved, it will mean
that by the time you are getting to elect your flag bearer, you will be in
2019,” he observed.
Dr Kunbour said the NDC constitution should be ‘explored in
times of challenges,’ adding that the time has come for the leadership of the
party to “use those powers to resolve a number of issues, and I guess this is a
useful thing we should be looking at.”
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