General News of Tuesday, 20 April 2021

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

Attempts to present Mahama as NDC leader ‘childish, unscientific’ – Benjamin Kunbuor

Dr. Benjamin Kunbuor, a member of NDC's Council of Elders Dr. Benjamin Kunbuor, a member of NDC's Council of Elders

John Dramani Mahama, the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress in the 2020 election has been called upon to resist attempt by some ‘sycophants’ to present him as the leader of the largest opposition party.

Dr. Benjamin Kunbuor, a member of the party’s Council of Elders has cautioned the former President to call to order some persons who seek to present him as the person in control of the party.

In a Joy News interview, Benjamin Kunbuor said that calls for John Mahama to lead the party in the 2024 elections are not just childish but also stem from unscientific and uninformed viewpoints.

He insisted that the party’s headache now should be how it galvanize itself and put in place a formidable plan for winning elections instead of being fixated with who leads the party in 2024.

“John Mahama has his presence; a leading and formidable person in the party but does that mean that John Mahama himself accepts that he is now in control of the party? I do not believe that is the way he thinks. People should not be in a hurry to invent enemies for John Mahama. I don’t know the motivation for the people to want to sandbar John Mahama in that way…It is childish, uninformed,, unscientific and anti-John Mahama. I believe he will deal with it,” he indicated.

Benjamin Kunbuor said that Rawlings suffered similar ‘sycophantic praises’ but was quick to nip it in the bud by publicly scathing the persons.

He asked John Mahama to find a solution to the matter as soon as possible before it hurts his campaign.

“If I were in John Mahama’s position and I have seen bits of it with Jerry John Rawlings; when you start behaving in this sycophantic manner, giving the impression that you are the one on whose health and breath John Mahama is surviving politically; many people will not take that. They will find an opportunity to draw your attention publicly that if that is the line you are running, you are not running it for me,” the former Majority Leader suggested.

He also played down suggestions that the NDC is at crossroads with deep cracks in the party. He touched on conversations about the party’s flagbearer for the 2024 elections.

“We are really not at a crossroads, but we are at a point in which the roads are likely to cross, and we want to avoid a situation of us getting into a crossroad,” he said.

“And I said that conversation is not opportune, it is irrelevant, it is an invention of a problem for the party which they might not have immediate answers to.

“But that issue of who becomes the flag bearer is contingent on a number of many specific issues which needs to be addressed so that any flag bearer’s position becomes relevant,” he stressed.