Feature: The crucial 2024 elections : My take

The elections in 2024 are beckoning, and the various political parties are making frantic preparations in great anticipation.

The main opposition National Democratic Congress has almost all its Parliamentary Candidates and flag-bearers ready for the crucial elections.
The New Patriotic Party is kickstarting the process to select a Flagbearer with the vetting of Presidential Candidates this coming Monday.

The coming elections promise both excitement and anxiety, considering the fact that the ruling New Patriotic Party would have served two terms and will want to break the Eight against precedent to continue a sweet third term.

The opposition National Democratic Congress would have stayed outside government for eight years and has already developed a ravenous appetite for the trappings and all the niceties of power.

A defeat for the National Democratic Congress would not bode well for the stability and survival of the party, as the majority of its members’ morale has already been sapped and wounded following the 2020 elections, whose outcome prompted the party to mount a Presidential election petition at the Supreme Court.

The ruling New Patriotic Party’s Achilles heel is internal apathy among its teeming and hitherto very enthusiastic followers, who sacrificed and fought really hard to catapult the party to power. Most of these people are still languishing with no appreciable rise in their standard of living because either they do not have God Fathers or their so-called God Fathers are not powerful enough within the corridors of power to give them any advantage or mileage.

This situation is further exacerbated by the actions and inactions of political Appointees who use their privileged positions, connections, and proximity to the corridors of power and the Presidency to teach some of these people, as they say, where power lies—the same power they worked together to achieve by refusing or denying them recruitment, contracts, and other privileges.

They behave as though they have a monopoly over power and that only they can mastermind the party into government.
I have so far monitored the campaigns of the various Presidential Candidates. Some of them have been very civil and decorous, with party unity and the espirit de corps at the forefront of their minds. I can also assert with authority that, the body language and utterances of some do not portend well for the party’s forward match. 

They appear to have an axe to grind with the political establishment and want to use this as a launch pad to teach them a lesson and muddy the waters for everybody.

What appears to be a real conundrum for the party and government is the communication deficit they suffer not because effort is not made to achieve outdoor achievements but because media houses that were previously impartial, neutral, balanced, and friendly have suddenly become hostile, belligerent, sabre-rattling, and uncompromising. They see nothing positive about government news worthy of purveying to the citizenry, and we are constantly bombarded on a daily basis with irritating news items about government, and known dissidents to the party and government have suddenly metamorphosed into experts who are invited to pour vitriol and tantrums into the topical issues they churn out.

The Government has to recalibrate its efforts in stabilising the economy, which has been buffeted by the twin evils of the Corona virus pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, to systematically bring relief to Ghanaians, who have been compelled to buckle their belts for some time now.

That said, given the legendary projects, among them the boldest and most ubiquitous free SHS, one district one factory, roads, STEM schools, rail infrastructure, Agenda 111, the Boankra inland port, and the Suame interchange, the New Patriotic Party’s greatest enemy as it navigates its way to maintain its stranglehold on power is the New Patriotic Party itself, and it should look within to right the wrongs.

Author: Kofi Obeng Adjei, Esq.