Track records will decide Bawumia, Alan’s fate

The political season is already in full swing as the New Patriotic Party (NPP) prepares to hold its presidential and parliamentary primaries ahead of the December 2024 general election.

The forthcoming g contest for the flagbearership of the NPP is expected to be a tight contest between Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and former Trades and Industry Minister, Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen.

Other claimants for the flagbearership of the NPP include a former Food and Agriculture Minister, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto; a former Energy Minister, Boakye Agyarko; a former General Secretary of the party, Kwabena Agyepong; the Member of Parliament for Assin Central, Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, and a former Trades and Industry Minister, Dr Kofi Konadu Apraku.  

 The NPP race is the complete opposite of the opposition National Democratic Congress’s (NDC) recent presidential primary, which, as had been widely expected, turned out to be a massive landslide victory for John Dramani Mahama, the immediate past president who looks to be the odds on favourite for a return to Jubilee House, considering the ongoing economic morass in the country.

But the NPP has the advantage of incumbency and despite the sharp decline in its economic performance record, there are still widespread concerns that the NDC does not have the expertise to turn the situation around, which means that the incumbent party still has a chance of winning the next presidential election.

Boast

Indeed, the NPP has always boasted of presidential contenders seeking to take over the leadership mantle from President Nana Akufo-Addo who is constitutionally barred from contesting for another term in office.

The pack, however, is led by Dr Bawumia and Mr Kyerematen, both of whom are the clear favourites and both of whom represent the NPP’s best chance of retaining power at next year’s presidential election. However, neither candidate has a clear advantage over the other at the forthcoming party primary.

The emergent conventional wisdom is that Dr Bawumia is the establishment candidate in that he is still the country’s second-highest person in authority and he has the tacit support of the President himself.

On the other hand, Alan Kyerematen, having resigned from his ministerial position to contest for the presidency has reinvented himself as the party’s anti-establishment candidate; thus, looking to garner the support of  people who are dissatisfied with the political administration he was part of for more than six years, or at least who doubt whether the electorate will accept someone who remains an integral part of the current government, as Dr Bawumia is.

Mr Kyerematen’s strategy is prudent, but contains one potentially fatal flaw: he has been too big a part of the Akufo-Addo administration to distance himself now with any ‘credibility.’

As Trade and Industry Minister, he was one of the most powerful members of both the Cabinet and the Economic Management Team. Indeed, it is instructive that recently, a social media campaign by some people was carried out pointing out that Kyerematen was a major influence at a time when so many unpopular, or at least controversial, policy initiatives were formulated.

Indeed, it is too late for him to dissociate himself from the failings of the incumbent government and so some political analysts are recommending that he rather defends his track record of governance and emphasise his achievements in the NPP, as Dr Bawumia is doing.

Strategy

That strategy is certainly working for Dr Bawumia to some extent but he cannot disassociate himself from the economic management ‘shortcomings’ that have taken Ghana back to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a $3 billion bailout.

The current economic malaise has shut the doors of the international capital markets to the government, forcing it to make painful and hugely unpopular public debt restructuring.

The Vice-President can point out that in actual fact, he did not have nearly as much authority with regard to economic management as his title would suggest.

Indeed, that mantle fell on the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, which explains why both economic policy analysts and the political class (from both parties) lobbied for his removal at the height of the crisis.

Some political analysts claim that the Finance Minister’s supreme authority derives from his family relationship with the President — but that claim is not wholly credible.

 The simple truth is that Mr Ofori-Atta’s power is derived from the government’s fiscal difficulties. This is because the Finance Minister had the ultimate say in virtually everything concerning both revenues and expenditures, including the policies underpinning them. Dr Bawumia’s political strategists need to explain this as a central part of his campaign. 

Influence

The other key strategy is to emphasise the policies that the Vice-President did have authority over and how they have panned out.

Here Dr Bawumia’s track record is good, rather than bad and this should be able to influence voters in his favour at both the primary and the general election if he gets that far.

Take, for instance, his paperless ports initiative, which has increased state revenues from international trade duties and levies by over 50 per cent, while at the same time vastly improving the sheer efficiency with which goods pass through the country’s entry and exit points.

Another example is the medical drones initiative; Ghana remains the model in Africa in this regard and the results for remote communities have been lifesaving.

But his efforts, which put him in the best stead, have been his championing of the digitalisation of Ghana’s economy, its society and governance itself, which has effectively enabled the country to bridge the digital divide.

More importantly, those initiatives have provided the foundation for bringing the vast informal sector into the tax net, which stands to overcome Ghana’s single biggest challenge with regard to macro-economic management: inadequate revenues, despite the over-taxation of the formal sector.

Interestingly by remaining in the current administration, Dr Bawumia has a key advantage over Mr Kyerematen of still being able to devise and implement policies that gratify the electorate; for instance, his new initiative of providing pre-tertiary pupils with computers already loaded with learning materials.

Despite all this though, Kyerematen’s strategy of hanging Ghana’s recent economic management shortcomings on Dr Bawumia will still have dire effects. 

Here though Dr Bawumia can correctly point to his past achievements — particularly as deputy governor of the Bank of Ghana as evidence that where he is given the real authority with regard to economic management, he does the right thing; which is why then candidate Nana Akufo-Addo insisted on having him as his running mate despite protests from many in the NPP.

Ultimately, the NPP presidential primary will depend largely on delegate perceptions of the roles played by both Mr Kyerematen and Dr Bawumia since 2017. 

If the delegates can see through the politics and judge by actual performance, it will either be Dr Bawumia or Alan Kyerematen. The choice is for the delegates to decide.