The Parliamentary Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for Essikado-Ketan Constituency, Charles Onuawonto Bissue, has said the party cannot afford the recurrence of the 2008 electoral defeat in the pending elections.

According to him, the NPP’s complicency accounted for that lose, given that the margins were relatively lower.

At a mini rally held at Takoradi on Saturday, August 17, 2024, Bissue indicated that the NPP lost by some twenty-three thousand votes to the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

He explained that the margin represented, on average, a loss of a single vote at each of the polling stations across the country.

Impressed by the mammoth crowd at the rally, Charles Bissue charged members and sympathisers of the party to step out in their numbers to campaign and win votes for the party at all levels in the coming elections.

“Let’s guard against the experiences of the 2008 elections. We lost just about twenty-three thousand votes. At the time, we had twenty-three thousand polling stations, so we lost on average, a vote per polling station. We had such a wonderful crowd as this, during our campaign yet we lost to the NDC.

“Let’s go out in our numbers to campaign for victory right after the manifesto is launched,” he emphasized.

The Vice Presidential Candidate of the NPP, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, corroborated Bissue’s assertion, stressing that the NPP had the chance to remain in power after the expiration of the tenure of former President John Agyekum Kufuor.

He continued that the records of accomplishments of the John Agyekum Kufuor’s administration won the admiration of many Ghanaians, yet the NDC, through their “deception” got the electorates to vote against the NPP in 2008.

“For the accomplishments of President Kufuor, Ghanaians shouldn’t have voted against the NPP. We forgot, and suffered the consequences at the hands of the NDC,” he said.

He added that the NDC sponsored a total of forty-seven advertisements against the Free SHS policy that was proposed by then presidential candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

“In 2016, a political party sponsored 47 advertisements against the Free SHS policy. They said that the Free SHS was a bad policy. That, if they had over two billion Ghana Cedis, they wouldn’t invest in the Free SHS.

“… today, they want to take credit as the originators of the Free SHS policy,” he added.

The NPP will launch its manifesto in Takoradi on Sunday, August 18, 2024.

KA/AE