General News of Wednesday, 14 December 2016

Source: 3news.com

Complacency caused NDC’s defeat – ET Mensah

Mr. E. T. Mensah Mr. E. T. Mensah

A leading member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) who is also the outgoing Member of Parliament for Ningo Prampram, Mr. E. T. Mensah has attributed the party’ defeat to complacency.

He is also bitter that counsel of experienced people like himself was not taken serious by the party. Speaking on Yen Nsempa, a morning show on Onua FM hosted by Bright Akwasi Asempa, the veteran politician revealed that despite his worth of experience in Parliament, an action was orchestrated by persons in powerful position in government to unseat him.

He indicated that the defeat may shock many party members, because everybody had thought the 2016 election was going to be won on a silver platter. He recalled how he and others were vilified and insulted when they tried to steer the party off the collision course.

ET Mensah indicated that the Flagstaff House interfered with the party’s parliamentary process which eventually caused them to lose a number of seats in parliament to their political opponent.

The outgoing MP insisted that a conscious effort was made by persons at the presidency to ensure that experienced NDC MPs did not succeed. There is no way you can succeed when your frontline is divided, he observed, but was confident the NDC will not collapse in opposition.

He said the party would put the pieces together and bounce back more formidable for 2020. E.T. Mensah emphasized that any political party that entertains complacency will fall, which he said was not peculiar to the NDC.

The former Minister of Youth and Sports reiterated that if some of them who were sidelined had been included and seriously involved in the campaign process, NDC wouldn’t have lost massively to the NPP.

But Dr. Isaac Owusu Mensah a political science lecturer at the University of Ghana felt the NDC lost the elections because they over-concentrated on infrastructural development. Dr. Owusu Mensah had conducted a poll that put Nana Akufo-Addo ahead of John Mahama in the run up to the 2016 elections.