The Northern Region Secretary of the National Democratic Congress has played down the influence of the running mate of the New Patriotic Party for the calamitous defeat the governing party suffered in the December elections.
Abdul Rauf Halid said the defeat was more as a result of the “political tsunami that swept through the entire country” than a seeming magical performance by the NPP running mate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.
The governing National Democratic Congress lost both the executive power and parliamentary majority in an election that saw the incumbent president John Mahama losing by over a million votes to his fiercest contender Nana Akufo-Addo who represented the opposition New Patriotic Party.
The NPP who was in the minority in Parliament with 122 seats, now have a whopping 171 seats out of the 275 seats.
Even though it was a collective effort by the NPP in winning the election, the effort of Dr Bawumia has received national acclaim.
His depth of knowledge on the country’s economic issues, and piercing political jabs at the president and his vice appeared too hot to handle by spokespersons of the governing party.
The impressive results from the Northern Region where Bawumia hails from was a testament of the influence of the NPP running mate.
A region that is traditionally NDC, the opposition New Patriotic Party made massive inroads and won more seats than they did in the 2012 elections.
Even though they are yet to sit and have a regional postmortem of the election results, the Northern Region Secretary of the NDC said the defeat could not have been the ingenuity of Dr Bawumia.
He said there were other self inflicting reasons that made the party lose the elections.
According to him, internal wrangling between parliamentary candidates and District Chief Executives was part of the reason the party lost in the region.
Abdul Rauf Halid said as many as six seats were gifted to the NPP just because of the differences between the DCEs and parliamentary candidates.
He named some of the seats as Nalerigu and Gushegu. He hopes that with better understanding the party will come out strong in the region in the next election.
He also dismissed assertions that the party was unable to manage its personnel well ahead of the election which led to some going independent.
Rauf Halid said even when some of the men were threatened with dismissal from the party, they still went independent thinking they were more popular than the party’s candidate only for them to lose together with the party’s candidate.
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