Let’s conduct clean campaign — Dr Akoto

A flag bearer hopeful of the New Patriotic Party, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has appealed to his fellow contestants to conduct a clean campaign devoid of antagonism so that the party can come out of the selection of the flag bearer race more united.

“At the end of the day, we have to go as a united party to retain power, come 2024.

“So, I will just plead with my colleagues who are also campaigning just to stay on the vision that they have for the party and for the country and not be talking at cross purposes,” he said.

Clean campaign

Speaking in an interview with the Daily Graphic on the need for a clean campaign devoid of name-calling and divisive tendencies, Dr Akoto urged his fellow contenders to focus more on an issues-based campaign.

He stressed that any campaign that was focused on attacks, “will make it difficult for all of us to unite as one body to fight to win the election.

“That is the price we have to pay if we do not go by the ethics of focusing on what we are bringing to the table – the major issues confronting the party and how we will grow the party in the future and more importantly, what is lying ahead of us in 2024.

How are we going to win?

“All these ideas should come to the fore for the delegates to make up their minds, whose ideas are more powerful, so that together, we can lead the party to victory, come 2024,” Dr Akoto said.

He said it would be unfortunate if some of the contenders were engaging in personality attacks, adding that the members of his campaign team were busy interacting and rallying delegates as well as selling their ideas.

Interactions

“As far as we are concerned, we are taking advantage of the visits to the various constituencies to interact with the delegates and address their concerns.

“We demonstrate that we know their concerns that they are expressing, acknowledging that there is a problem and also proffering solutions to these problems,” he added.

He expressed his belief that all his fellow contestants were equally busily selling their ideas and visions to the delegates.

Touching on what he had been doing in preparation towards the super delegates conference, Dr Akoto explained that his team had been busy visiting constituencies throughout the country.

He said due to the fact that the super delegates conference was so close, “my campaign team has decided to be selective, combining rural and urban constituencies as we go along, just to pick up the concerns of delegates in the rural and urban areas”.

Dr Akoto said the strategy had worked very well, starting from the Greater Accra, Central, Volta regions and ended up in the Eastern Region for the first leg.

“Our rounds have been very revealing because since we started this journey, this is the first time, directly we were dealing with polling station executives.

“The turnout was incredible because almost all the polling station executives turned out wherever we went, with their electoral area coordinators, the constituency executives and the council of elders.

“It is just the energy and the enthusiasm with which they welcomed us which was unimaginable, and you could see that the format that we are using is very helpful,” Dr Akoto said.