NPP presidential race: I’ll be in best 5 — Boakye Agyarko

A New Patriotic Party (NPP) Presidential hopeful, Boakye Agyarko, has expressed confidence that he will be among the best five aspirants to be selected by the delegates to contest the November 4, 2023 presidential primary.

“I am very confident that I will be in the group of five.

I am very, very confident God willing. I am absolutely sure that I will be in the five,” he said

The NPP will on August 26, 2023 convene a special delegates conference to select five of the 10 candidates to contest the November 4, 2023 presidential primary.

Per the party’s constitution, if more than five aspirants qualify to contest the presidential primary, the party will convene a special electoral college to select five candidates for the final around.

Vetting

So far, the vetting committee of the party on July 12, 2023 cleared all the 10 presidential aspirants for the special Electoral College election.

In an interview with Daily Graphic in Accra, Mr Agyarko said he was the only candidate that could help the party break an eight-year political cycle.

He also called for a re-examination of the concept of the super delegate conference, “I think that at the appropriate time, after this one we ought to take a very careful look at what gave rise to it, its necessity, its impact on cohesion of the party and all of that and review that position," he said.

NPP best party

Mr Agyarko, a former Minister of Energy, also underscored the importance of retaining the ruling NPP in power for the next decade.

“The NPP in my judgement is the only political party that represents the safest pair of hands to handle and manage the affairs of this country.”

The presidential hopeful further explained that for Ghana to make progress, the kind of ideological underpinning drivers to make that happen lay with the NPP.

“My wish is that the NPP must continue to stay in power for the next 40 to 60 years,” he stressed.

Leadership will

Although Mr Agyarko acknowledged the challenges in the country, he said with a dynamic leadership and a united front the challenges would be a thing of the past.

“There are challenges ahead of us, I agree. If we as a party have the will to mobilise the nation properly behind policies and programmes, we can solve these matters,” he stated.

He added that “It is going to call for leadership and total mobilisation of the country, not just the party.

That is why there must be a dialogue of all the parties.”

"NPP and National Democratic Congress (NDC), we shout at ourselves but we are not enemies.

We represent different point of view for developing this country.

The real enemy is poverty not ourselves.

So whichever political party brings forth the programmes and the policies to defeat poverty has won for this country,” he said.