Is Talensi a precursor of 2016?
The much-hyped bye-election in the Talensi constituency is over. The National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate, BT Baba, won the seat handily which had previously been held by Robert Mosore of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) who had resigned the seat to seek, successfully, the chiefship of his people when the skin fell vacant.
Advertisement
The hype of the bye-election was encapsulated by the two leaders of the two biggest contending parties at their respective final rallies two days before the vote last Tuesday.
President Mahama said emphatically at the NDC rally that the bye-election victory, which the NDC would annex, would be a dress rehearsal for the general election in December 2016. Similarly, Nana Akufo-Addo of the NPP said the victory of the party’s candidate would signal a return of the NPP to power next year.
These are the positive statements made by the important personalities in the respective parties, and they must have been based on their individual assessments of their chances.
Of course, as party generalissimos, their confidence in the work and reports of their party strategists on the ground is what is revealed in these assertions. In truth, they could not have done the legwork personally; President Mahama was in Talensi for only five hours and garnered 42 per cent, while Nana Akufo-Addo was there for four days and his candidate got 27 per cent of the vote, meaning, inferentially, that the time spared by the party leaders on the campaign proper did not translate into votes.
The vote itself was peaceful, even though there were pockets of violence which some of us are trying mightily to overshadow the poll itself. No one has claimed the violence, regrettable as it is, had an impact on voters and the process generally. In the end, security prevailed and the NDC candidate, as predicted by his party from day one, won handily, retuning the party to a seat it had held for nearly two decades.
My concerns
I have only two concerns in this column today, one outlandish but a matter of practical politics that the losers never considered, to my surprise. The other is actually related to my first concern. They both border on the appropriateness of the leadership and strategy of the NPP.
The first concern is related to the widely-held view that the seat was dicey for the NPP, having won it for the first time in unique circumstances in 2012. Therefore, it was imperative and foreordained that a better strategy would have been to used the opportunity to cement a 2012 strategy by backing the PNC candidate, who had stood thrice and was well-known already. This would have had the added advantage of building a useful coalition for the 2016 election.
Why didn’t the NPP even hint at such a move? Probably because it had been blinded by the prospects of victory single handed in 2016, a view unsupported by any history of NPP elections in the north, and guaranteed to ensure failure in both the bye-election and the 2016 election. The historical moment for this has passed, and it is squarely the fault and doing of party leadership.
The NDC General Secretary Asiedu-Nketia kept hinting at this weeks before the poll, when he claimed that the strongest party in the area after the NDC was the PNC.
It is simply amazing these days the chances the NPP let slip, unassisted by their opponents who are wide awake, and masters of opportunity. I believe that with a PNC/NPP alliance, the ticket would still have lost but the gesture would have reaped incalculable political bounty for the NPP in the 2016 polls.
My other concern is the inability of party leadership to present a united front when it really matters. The failure of the NPP campaign to involve its national chairman Paul Afoko and General Secretary Kwabena Agyepong was fatal to the NPP effort, especially since Afoko hails from the region.
There are many shallow individuals who will snort and huff and puff at such a strategy, downplaying its significance. Such people, congenital sycophants, believe everybody must give way to the flag bearer.It is not realistic, to put it mildly.
The only flag bearer everybody must give way to, because our constitution says so, is an elected President. Before that happens, and indeed for that to happen, the flagbearer must have sought the personal allegiance of each of his significant party members. They cannot prevent your election as flag bearer, but they can prevent your election as President, even if you lose bye-elections.
Did the NDC win in 2004 when party chairman and general secretary, Drs Obed Asamoah and Josiah-Aryeh, respectively were widely seen as stumbling-blocks to victory? It is the duty of leadership to establish a meaningful system of addressing grievances and making everyone feel important to eventual victory.
Unfruitful gestures
The NPP, as presently led and constituted, has no capacity for gestures, whether those gestures are merely symbolic or meaningful. On the other hand, it has an unequalled capacity for dreaming of the fruits of gestures that they are unwilling to work for. As I write, positions which are the fruit of victory are already being apportioned, as if victory is pre-ordained by mere assertion.
Of course, all this is based on the deeply erroneous belief that the ruling NDC is asleep, and incapable of bestirring itself as the most popular party in the polity.
It never ceases to amaze when leading members of the chattering-classes in this country speak and behave as if the ruling party, a party which is more adept at winning elections, is comatose, when nothing can be further from the truth.
Indeed, winning four out of six general elections so far in the fourth republic should have bred a healthy respect for the electoral competence of the party.
Indeed, even some of us erroneously hold the view that the NDC is related to the PNDC from which it sprang. This false assertion, such as the claim that the UGCC is related to the NPP of today, is risible, and not shared by voters who see and validate a party with their support.
Advertisement
The question, therefore, still remains whether the Talensi victory means anything as far as the fortunes of 2016 are concerned. Yes, it is only one out of 275 seats in the country and should not be seen as the arbiter of political fate, unless you lost a bet you unwisely engaged in.
aburaepistle@hotmail.com