Is Bawumia not his own man?

The race for the position of flag bearer for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for Election 2024 is now in full flight after the vetting committee passed all 10 aspirants.

 Incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo is ending his term leaving the field open for the 10 aspirants in the NPP, five of whom would have to be endorsed by a Special Electoral College on August 26 before the primary itself on November 4.

The aspirants are Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, Joe Ghartey, Boakye Agyarko, Francis Addai Nimoh, Kwadwo Poku, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto and Dr Kofi Konadu Apraku.

But there are two clear front runners – Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and the immediate past Minister of Trade and Industry, Alan Kyerematen.

Going into 2024, the NPP’s main strength is its incumbency, although the history of Ghana’s Fourth Republic so far indicates that no incumbent party has won three presidential elections in a row.

Economic challenges

The governing NPP’s task is made harder still by the deep economic challenges facing the country, which has resulted in a cost of living crisis for most of the electorate.

Both leading presidential contenders of the party are being affected by perceptions of the NPP’s shortcomings with regard to economic management performance.

However, Dr Bawumia is worse affected because as the current Vice-President, he is also the chairman of the government’s economic management team and indeed it is his renowned expertise in economic management that convinced President Akufo-Addo to choose him as his running mate in the first place, in both of the past two presidential elections.

On the other hand, although Alan Kyerematen held the key trade and industry ministerial position – which also made him one of the most influential members of the cabinet – between 2017 and 2022, he has been striving to distance himself from the government’s economic shortcomings since he resigned from office to contest for the presidency.

Instructively though, some of the electorate are not buying into that strategy, insisting that he should share in the collective blame for the current dire economic situation as any other member of the Akufo-Addo administration.

Loyalty

Dr Bawumia, for his part, does not have this option and his loyalty to President Akufo-Addo would not allow him to adopt it even if he could.

Consequently, he is towing the party line that Ghana’s economic troubles are primarily the result of external forces – specifically the global COVID-19 pandemic and the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine – and is emphasising his own veritable contributions to the many key successes that their administration has chalked up.

These include the potentially transformative digitalisation of Ghana, the introduction of paperless ports procedures at the country’s points of entry, which have dramatically increased public revenues by minimising leakages through corrupt practices, the use of medical drones to deliver direly needed medicines to remote communities and most lately the innovative gold for oil initiative, which has reduced intense pressure on the country’s foreign exchange reserves, thus stemming the erstwhile sharp depreciation of the cedi against international trading currencies.

Cursory look

But perhaps even more importantly, a deeper than just cursory examination of Dr Bawumia’s role in the management of the economy suggests that he is not to blame for the shortcomings of the government that he remains part of. 

 Even more instructively, Dr Bawumia’s annual public lectures, delivered while he was a running mate to then-presidential candidate Akufo-Addo, showed a clear departure from some of the policies adopted by the government which now appear to have contributed to the current economic challenges facing the country.

In particular, Dr Bawumia never advocated sharply increased foreign exchange borrowing to fund the local forex market as a primary way to stem the cedi’s depreciation, a strategy which has contributed the most with regard to domestic factors -to Ghana’s current economic challenges.

However, Dr Bawumia’s loyalty to President Akufo-Addo has prevented him from openly protesting against policies endorsed by the President, which have come back to haunt the country.

Rather, he has simply avoided endorsing them either.

A vivid illustration of this is his refusal to endorse – or even comment – on the controversial E-levy initiative.

Dr Bawumia now has the opportunity to be his own man – if he becomes president, he could put his own selections in key positions of economic management, and pursue his own preferred policies, rather than play along with policies he has not been comfortable with in his effort to show loyalty to a president who chose him as his Vice over the protestations of many long-standing senior NPP party stalwarts.

Indeed, insiders within his camp claim this is his overriding motive for seeking the presidency; to set right what has gone wrong over his own private protestations and public silence.

If indeed that is the case, then perhaps Dr Bawumia deserves a chance to put his vaunted economic expertise to use in righting the keel of Ghana’s economy, which has ponderously come close to overturning.