The National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament for Kumbungu, Ras Mubarak, is already looking ahead to the 2020 election and he believes the immediate past President, John Mahama, is the man to lead their party to victory in the next four years.
Former President Mahama is coming off the worst election defeat of a sitting president in Ghana’s democracy, where he recorded 44.40 percent of valid votes cast, losing to the New Patriotic Party’s Nana Akufo-Addo, who was endorsed by 53.85 percent of the electorate.
Despite the election defeat, Ras Mubarak said John Mahama is a tried and tested option for the NDC, following his election victory in 2012.
“In the next election, I do not see any other candidate who can best lead us to victory other than John Dramani Mahama. He has been there; he knows what we need to do to get it right.”
“The rank and file and a majority of people I have spoken to are all eagerly awaiting to have President Mahama on the NDC’s ticket in 2020, and I think he would be very exciting. I think he is the only candidate who can get us the victory,” Mr. Mubarak said.
Without explicitly endorsing the former President for 2020, the NDC MP for Wa Central, Rashid Pelpuo, also said he had enjoyed John Mahama’s Presidency, adding that “I think he did well and I believe that given the chance, he would have done even better than he did.”
There has been roughly a month of introspection after the NDC’s defeat in the 2016 general elections, and Mr. Pelpuo also believes Ghanaians may have taken John Mahama for granted.
“Ghanaians will regret, possibly, for throwing away a pearl like John Mahama”, the legislator said in an interview with Citi News’ Richard Dela Sky minutes after the expiration of the sixth Parliament of Ghana’s fourth Republic in the early hours of January 7.
The Flagbearer of the NDC for election 2020 is likely to be decided on after the party’s national congress which its General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has indicated will be in 2018.
That congress is also expected to allow the executives to devise strategies towards the 2020 elections after it lost by a little over one million votes in the 2016 elections.
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