Since August 2009, the New Patriotic Party has initiated and implemented a number of farsighted measures targeted at strengthening the party’s organisation to enable it overcome its electoral shortcomings to achieve its ultimate aim of returning to the corridors of power in 2012.

Key among the measures was the amendments to the party’s constitution to enable the grassroots members, those who do the actual canvassing, have a greater say in the running of the party.

Expanding the party’s Electoral College to ensure that polling station executives were at the heart of electing the party’s flagbearer and parliamentary candidates was crucial for the party and at the end of this exercise strengthened the front of the party and fostered unity within the ranks of the party.

Today, it was overwhelmingly down to the polling station volunteers, some 105,000 of them nationwide, in deciding who became the party’s candidate in both the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2012.

But the party did not just leave it there. For the 2012 campaign, the decision of Nana Akufo-Addo is that the same polling station executives, the foot soldiers of the party, have to be placed at the heart of the party campaign in 2012. The NPP is going to conduct a total grassroots campaign which will be “Electoral Area and Polling Station based”.

This is because elections are won or lost in the polling station area; it is where the voters live; it is where they vote and the polling station officers are the ones who live with them; who can identify them; who can preach the party’s message; who can get them out to vote and who will protect the ballot.

The Campaign Manager of Nana Akufo-Addo, Boakye Agyarko, has made it clear that the party intends to conduct a scientific campaign in 2012 and the formation of a 20-man canvassing team in each of the 21,032 polling stations is a testament to this. The 2008 voter register pegged the number of registered voters at 13,278,941. It therefore implies that every polling station has an average of 631 registered voters within its domain.

Each member of the polling station canvassing team will be responsible for approximately 32 registered voters and this will make it easier for the party to deliver its message of hope to every Ghanaian, irrespective of their location. It will be scientific and intimate.

The decision to make former President J A Kufuor the chairman of the Campaign Advisory Board is indeed commendable. President Kufuor has had over 42 years of experience in active frontline politics, and his invaluable experience will be of great benefit to the campaign.

The message to Ghanaians is loud and clear: in the NPP you have a party that is strong, united and focused. In the NPP you have a leader who knows what he wants to do with the power if given: to build a new society of opportunities and transform the Ghanaian economy.

Nana Addo has urged his party to approach the next election with discipline, dedication and determination. What is left are the resources to prosecute this campaign. What Ghanaians expect from the NPP is to come up with programmes that can viably undertake the kind of transformation and compassionate leadership that Nana Addo is promising.

The future, indeed, appears brighter for the NPP and for Ghana.