It’s like a game of chess; everyone is confident about their chances of winning until the actual end of play.
And already, the leading players in the political chess game of Ghana have been speaking their minds, declaring what they believe in and discrediting their opponents, all in an attempt to emerge as the darlings of the electorates who will cast their votes on Saturday, December 7, 2024.
This mindset fed into some of the comments that Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, the National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) – Ghana’s largest opposition party, made during an interview on the JoyNews channel.
With the usual boldness in his speech, the man known as General Mosquito (now Chairman Mosquito) minced no words when he declared that the John Dramani Mahama-led NDC would secure a one-touch victory in the December polls.
A crucial and highly-contested election it will be, but tougher-talking people like Asiedu Nketiah believe they have got the Midas Touch already and know their way around getting the full points of this game by the time it is done.
But how is that all going to come about?
Speaking in the interview on Wednesday, August 14, 2024, General Mosquito said the NDC is employing a range of strategies to secure a clear win without the need for a runoff. In his own words, “I strongly believe that the NDC is going to win hands down.”
That statement was also to dismiss the widely common notion that a change in candidates after a sitting president’s two-term tenure necessarily leads to a runoff in the general elections.
He further supported his argument with the explanation that the likelihood of a runoff is heavily influenced by the performance of the sitting president, rather than being an automatic consequence of a party change.
“We are looking at a one-touch victory, and it has a lot to do with the performance of the sitting president as well. It’s not just a straightforward thing that when there is a change of party, there is a runoff. It depends more on the performance of the sitting president, how well he has performed, or otherwise,” he explained in the interview.
So, in the estimations of Johnson Asiedu Nketiah and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), although the perceived underperformance of the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo government would play a significant role in their campaign, that alone will not be the focus.
Alleviating the plights and hardships of the ordinary Ghanaian, he added, will be at the fulcrum of the NDC campaign.
“The strength of our message of giving hope to a hopeless situation will also impact the campaign. And I think that all put together, we are likely to have a one-touch election victory,” he stated.
But that is only one side of the political message as the country heads into the general elections in December, because right on the other side of the political divide, the message could be different, or bluntly the same for them too – only that it would not be in support of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
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Rev Albert Ocran
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