The oft-cite quote, "Elections have consequences," coined by former U.S. president Barack Obama, is apropos in the New Patriotic Party's (NPP) performance in the 2024 general election.

Not only has the defeat dealt a profound blow to the party's internal politics and continues to roil the rank-and-file, but it's also hard to overstate the transformation in our national politics.

The historic defeat stings the most because it is the worst in the party's political history. Today, the loss remains a significant collective trauma and a big divide in the Party as members wrestle with denial, disappointment, frustration, and disbelief, ushering in a somber period of soul-searching, reflection, and future recalibration.

Undoubtedly, we have learned a collective bitter lesson that elections have consequences. We acknowledge the imperative, salient impetus for change, but there is also a cross-country consensus among even nonmembers for change within NPP.

The realization of change compels us to undergo profound, sincere, and earnest self-introspection, conceive innovative ideas, and manage our rebuilding efforts toward stability and realignment, that is, reverse the support based on NPP to, at least, the 2016 levels.

Reflection on Why We Lost the 2024 Elections

It's surprising when we ask why we lost the 2024 elections. It's not a secret to many Ghanaians why we lost the election. Others have offered theories, and multiple factors abound on why we lost the 2024 general elections, and I will share a perspective.

NPP, in the pre-COVID period, had several successful accomplishments, ranging from the introduction of the free senior high school program, construction of educational facilities, construction and repayment of roads, innovative technological programs such as the "zipline" medical supply delivery, the national identification card system, national address system, and many others.

Even Ghana's government's management of the COVID-19 virus received international acclaim. So, what happened that led Ghanaians to fall out of love with the NPP, leading to the devastating electoral performance in the 2024 general elections?

Despite the marked, impressive development led by the NPP, the 2024 election underscored a unique feature of Ghanaian voters' political attitudes. Years of economic hardship dashed NPP's initial promise of hope.

Reading the national mood, perennial top-line issues such as high unemployment, acute and widening disparity in income, crushing poverty, and higher and increasing cost of living were essential but not the top concerns for the electorate.

Instead, the perceived or accurate underlying brazen portrayal of insensitivity and responsiveness toward national priority issues, the lack of individual and collective political accountability, political corruption among elected and appointed public officials, state capture, and behavioral anomalies that bordered on arrogance were.

The perception that elected officials and government appointees were out of touch with ordinary Ghanaians gradually stuck and took its toll on NPP's popularity and brand in the electorate.

The palpable skepticism about the government's overall latter-years behavior and performance, the misguided and uncontrolled, profligate spending, misallocation, and misappropriation of public funds and resources became a concern.

Younger voters, who did not experience the unnecessary, disorienting, and bloodied experiences of the troubled history of the NDC under former President John Jerry Rawlings and the hardship meted onto Ghanaians, especially residents in the Greater Accra and the Ashanti Regions, were less deferential and more critical of some of these and other shortcomings.

They did not share their parents' experiences and support for the NPP, reminiscing about the carnage and the troubled history of the NDC. In some instances, we had the opportunity to show sensitivity to the plight of Ghanaians and, in others, counter unfounded allegations, but for some unexplained reason(s), we offered no countervailing responses against or even addressed them.

Despite our numerous successful accomplishments, we became obsessed with our reflection in the mirror. We ran hard on a singular accomplishment; our behavior and attitude overshadowed our signature, transformative flagship free "Senior High School" Program. Our domestic policies were episodic and fragmented, except for the education policies.

Our foreign policy lacked a discernible orientation and posture. Overall, some of our policy responses lacked the intellectual underpinnings of direction and depth. Undeniably, the electorate viewed these issues and actions and voted pragmatically, not ideologically.

We obsessed with and capitalized on then-candidate John Mahama's weaknesses and used wedge issues we thought mattered as renewed national political consciousness and discourse. It's, therefore, essential to understand why the NDC won despite our fixation on the Party and candidate, John Mahama.

We tirelessly inveighed against candidate John Mahama and NDC's treacherous ambitions and the cascade of instability they purportedly would bring. But we allowed our obsessions to frame this singular opening, which became a colossal blunder.

Our strategy allowed NDC to come in from the cold with dubious engagement offers and other incentives. For example, the NDC's so-called, often touted 24-hour economy remains undefined. Undoubtedly, voters rejected the NPP era and opted for and endorsed the alternative of the NDC.

The 2024 general elections, like others before it, generated their extraordinary illusions, born out of our unbridled hope and unrestrained hype. We constantly and consistently nurtured the election as another "hook" to ensure our Party's success.

We cultivated it in the context of our party's acute addiction to self-congratulatory portraits of itself and intense insistence on premature praise for the unfulfilled promise and unfinished work of development. In such a context, there was no illusion more persistent, multi-layered, and misleading than that which imagined our campaign to bring radical change that the Ghanaian electorate would trust.

Collectively, we championed certain notions, but now that the reality of our loss has rolled through our doors, we have gained additional and altered insight into what we need to do.

Increasingly, we present contested candidates to elections because we undemocratically organize our internal leadership elections around ill-conceived cleavages and ineffective faction-based practices that often degenerate into politics of popularity and public adoration rather than be issue-based or solutions-oriented.

More importantly, we treat political campaigns and elections as essentially episodic engagements and not for the sustenance of the Party. We often forget that presidential and parliamentary campaigns, and even our internal leadership elections, call for centrism and a parade of compromises without which could deform and seriously mar the eventual candidate's vision, legitimacy, and integrity.

Our default actions often lead to the vulgarity of pragmatic justification of doing whatever is necessary to win—the experience of the last 2023 questionable presidential primaries remains seared into the memories of many supporters.

Even though we elected and eventually supported our flag-bearer, we cannot be collectively naïve not to understand that our conduct with the presidential primaries in 2023 was a significant nail in the party's "disunity" coffin and affected the legitimacy of our nominee.

Former U.S. president Richard Nixon once remarked, "Placing second in the Olympics wins a medal, but placing second in an election could lead to political oblivion." While winning elections serves the purpose of most political parties, available models show that the internal struggles of parties affect their image in the electorate.

Intra-party competition is a key component of political competition, determining the Party's internal structure and logic. The concept of external competition in internal organizations has been a focus within the industrial organization literature.

These studies show that external factors influence the behavior of those inside the firm. That is, the firm's internal structure influences those on the outside. What we overlooked in 2024 was the impact of public opinion.

There is a reality to our defeat. The 2024 ballots were not a "critical election" since most of our key supporters did not switch to the NDC. Instead, an unprecedented "dealignment" occurred as several traditional supporters lost their political loyalty to the NPP but did not crossover and vote for the NDC.

The 2024 election was highly competitive as partisan control of the presidency, and the legislature were on the line. Supporters of the NPP and the NDC saw the possibility of losing the election, and this magnified their perceived threat from opponents and heightened their attitudes toward them. We could correct the public's misperceptions about our politics by simply and constantly providing information we thought was correct.

The problem, it unfortunately turned out, was that the new information did not assuage or change voters' feelings about our political actions or issues they cared about. Undisputedly, the ominous implication of the 2024 elections is that public support is necessary for electoral success.

Regardless of their party loyalty, Ghanaians had a distaste for norm violations and would not elect and support a party whose leaders' actions threatened their normative positions and livelihood. Whether real or not, voters perceived the unconstrained elite behavior as normatively abhorrent, and it manifested itself in NPP's loss.

The electorate in Ghana spoke clearly and convincingly with their votes, and we should try to understand and take their perspective seriously.

Rebuilding

Given the urgency for internal change, the Party established the NPP Election Review Committee (NPP-ERC) to probe the causes of the horrible performance and proffer ideas to rebuild the Party for future electoral successes.

While logical, the audacious move presents a novel opportunity to address the invidious distinction between embracing modernity in the Party's future management or keeping our cherished tradition of merely tinkering on the edges as in pseudo-reform.

The electorate currently sees the NPP as an arena of unending conflict where ambitious factions and rivals have and continue to vie for positional advantages over others.

Typical NPP entrenched positions have already emerged on specific courses of action while the Committee works. While some members and adherents fear that the reforms needed may elude the Party, others are far more attentive to the significance of the demonstration effects, aware of the path-dependent historical trajectories of events on the strategic calculations of factions, individuals, and actors.

Others are equally concerned about the opportunity of foreign borrowing as a situational advantage of backwardness. Still, others fear the ongoing agitation for influence would adversely signal an axial shift in the Party's internal politics.

The way these simultaneous reinterpretation and mutual adjustments may play out would be highly relevant to understanding and explaining the extent, process, and viability of the Party's institutional adaptation.

To rebuild a resilient NPP, we may adopt V.O. Keys' (1942) analytical framework to shape our thoughts and strategies: i. the Party as an organization; ii. the Party in government, and iii. the Party in the electorate.

For the party as an organization, we must either re-found the Party as a genuinely pluralist party that embraces a reformist, forward-looking platform and a progressive policy agenda or undergo intentional, surgical, but deepened reforms on key pertinent organizational features.

These must include rethinking the party's structure, decision-making processes, how we resolve internal conflicts, ensuring the financial sustainability of the Party, increasing our membership, educating members about the Party, the election of leaders, discipline, how we are dealing with corruption, communication, bringing the Party into the digital age, and developing the research capacity of the Party, among others.

With the party in government, we must ensure co-governance and oversight between the Party and the government in key areas such as the Party ensuring the government implements the party manifesto, participation in the appointment processes of cabinet and other appointed positions, investigating perceived corrupt practices, uniformity of communication on policies, non-interference of the government in the affairs of the Party's parliamentary group's activities, and ensuring that the parliament translates the party's policy priorities into legislation, to start.

The party in the electorate must focus on educating Ghanaians about its history, effectively communicating through a Rapid Response Team, "the party's policy priorities and that of the opposition, rebranding the Party in the electorate, among others.

These attempts would require reinforcing our core beliefs in order, efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, multiculturalism and plurality (inclusive of all cleavages), and meritocracy. The focus must equally center on interrogating the internal and external factors that facilitated the Party's current state and affairs.

Despite the seemingly innovative ideas for deliberation and those we will omit, the most critical obstacle for seizing the moment to achieve enduring change would be the much nuanced but glaring lack of consensus or cohesion in our Party for electoral success.

Voters interpret such internal squabbles not as expressions of democracy but as opportunistic factionalism, weak political capacity, or an indication that something is seriously amiss with the party. Factions are suitable for political parties, but, as James Madison elucidated in The Federalist 10, we must eschew excessive and subversive factionalism and its attendant effects.

While the electorates have punished parties elsewhere for such behavior, ours occurred in 2024. However, there are two ways of achieving consensus and unity. One is to split the difference between the opposing end and the forces obstructing reforms.

The other is for the leadership to use the party's accumulated goodwill to transform the political center and thereby alter the political dynamics internal and external of the party. While we can do a bit of both, the default position must be the "politics of accommodation." Nevertheless, any default position of reform without a symbolic, instrumental, forward-thinking, transformative, and strategic action would be counterproductive.

We know comprehensive, instrumental, or symbolic rebuilding will not happen spontaneously. It will take exceptional party resolve and leadership. We've already witnessed obstacles to seizing the moment to produce fundamental change, some systemic and others self-inflicted.

The systemic obstacles include the lingering political power of the old order to block reforms or strategically and adroitly tinkering with existing policies as in a zero-sum game. This action would lead to a defensive redoubling of political resolve.

A second systemic obstacle is that the NPP needs reform. Still, there is no widespread, action-oriented movement within the Party with a clear, comprehensive vision of what the change will and should look like so we can put the wind on such progressive leadership's back to modernize our Party.

And as the genius Frederick Douglas quipped, there is no hope for radical change, real or imagined or respectable, without a movement that produces a vision, values, programs, and self-conscious practices that bring fruitful and meaningful change.

Otherwise, our present call for change, as in the past, will leave the prevailing structures and weak institutional decision-making capacity order, which appear insensitive to the grassroots who, in the last election, failed to submit or genuflect and led to our memorable defeat.

Indeed, some self-inflicted actions are so bothersome a force we must not bottled up anymore. In our quest for real, forward-thinking, and deep-rooted political and social change, we must put aside our cherished illusions for the sake of Ghana, Ghanaians, and our Party and prepare for the long, complex, demanding, and imperative responsibility of rebuilding our Party based on trust, consistency, transparency, and order.

Heeding the advice of the legendary Amical Cabral, who once said we must "mask no difficulties, tell no lies, and claim no easy victories." The circulating ideas provide no readable or reliable indications of whether such ideas will unite and strengthen our Party or bring members together for a smoothie talk to discuss more of the sleep-inducing weak ideas.

To echo the legendary Frank Fannon, if we are serious about change, we must think new thoughts and engage in new practices to rebuild our Party and reinvigorate our membership, sympathizers, and the nation.

A review of history teaches that struggle is indispensable to progress. Former U.S. president Ronald Reagan stated, "There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers," resilient political parties don't just bounce back from the misfortune of electoral defeat or change.

As we rebuild NPP, we should ask a few questions: i) what internal and external factors caused our defeat? ii) Which demographic shifted away from us, and why? iii) did our messaging resonate with issues the voters care about? And iv) how did our opponent capitalize on our weaknesses?

On Institutional Change, Stability, and Adaptation

A rich scholarly literature on institutional evolution has already drawn attention to processes such as "hybridization," "institutional layering," "institutional conversion," and the "reworking" or "blending" of old and new institutions.

While we had anticipated the fundamental dilemma of institutional adaptation across time and space, and while we must expect the malleability of institutional structures and processes over time in response to changing social environments, we sometimes tend to reify the constituent elements of institutions and treat their norms and social relations as either rigidly fixed or infinitely malleable.

It has become a worldwide trend for political parties to reinvent their organizational structures to improve electoral outcomes. In the process, practitioners have asked vital questions as they sought to understand meaningful long-term solutions, some semblance of stability, and enhanced electoral outcomes.

In some instances, political leaders have attempted to take the easy way: adjust the organizational structure without much insightful planning or indiscriminately adopt quick fixes that end up compromising electoral chances or addressing symptoms of organizational problems rather than taking the time to respond to the root causes of issues with new political and management strategies.

Cultural and sociological approaches hold that institutions dictate "logic of appropriateness"; they tell the actors what they should prefer in specific situations.

Historical institutionalism posits that power causes institutional stability and instability. Political agents often try to "change the rules of the game" to retain or extend their privileged positions and power because an agent derives their power from the institutions they help design.

The "doubling" of power often makes it extra costly, complex, or risky for weak agents to challenge the status quo institutional order. We know that political parties do not operate in a vacuum; formal institutions tend to remain "sticky" even when the political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental conditions within which they operate and exist change or require a review.

March and Olsen (1984) argue that institutional change rarely satisfies the prior intentions of leaders who initiated it. Moreover, our understanding of the transformation of political institutions requires that we recognize the frequent multiple but inconsistent and ambiguous intentions that are often part of a system of attitudes, goals, and visions that embed institutions in other beliefs and aspirations.

While tracing the interaction of ideas, interests, and institutions, we often confront situations where institutions are biased toward continuity or even pose obstacles to change. At times, they facilitate rather than impede change, and in those times, Ellen Immergut (1990) suggests that we focus not on identifying "veto groups" but "veto points" during change management.

"Veto groups" are factions, and "veto points" are areas of institutional weakness and vulnerability. They are points in the organization's change process or structure where the opposition can mobilize and thwart policy innovation. Process tracing becomes central to any institutional redesign activity through which the analysis occurs.

Institutions shape actors' goals and strategies and mediate cooperative and conflict relations; they structure economic and political situations and often leave their imprint on political outcomes such as elections.

In his seminal book, "The Great Transformations," Karl Polanyi's (1944) analysis deals explicitly with the consequences of macro-level changes in broad social and economic structures.

But Polanyi's elucidation of the causes and consequences of the transformative shift to a "market society" is anchored in an analysis of financial and social institutions in which battles over and within these broader forces form or crystallize.

Thus, institutionalists believe institutions refract and constrain politics but are not the only causes of outcomes. However, they structure and shape political interactions, therefore interrogating political outcomes.

Stephen Krasner (1984) applied Stephen Gould's concept of the "punctuated equilibrium model" of institutional change evolution, which deserves our attention. Krasner states that institutions are characterized by long periods of stability but periodically "punctuated" or changed by a triggering event or crisis, such as the loss of elections in NPP's case.

The ensuing change brings abrupt institutional disorder, causing internal and sometimes external desire for change, and after leaders make changes, stasis again sets in.

In Krasner's version, institutional crisis usually emanates from changes in the external environment, which reflects a breakdown of the prevailing institutional order, precipitating political conflict over the relevance of certain old features and calls for new institutional arrangements.

An Appeal to Rebuild and Recapture

The post-2024 election period is fluid in the electorates' thinking on national development issues. The NDC has been in power for a very short time. However, Ghanaians already miss the NPP, while others are now assessing which Party offers a solid path for developing the country and has the competence and capacity for its implementation.

In the last election, Ghanaians voted for the NDC; the next four years will determine whether they see a better alternative in the NDC.

After eight years in power and despite the anger dished out by Ghanaians, the NPP fundamentally enjoys a vast reservoir of widespread goodwill. The utility and relevance of the NPP as a major political party and institutional anchor in Ghana's democracy are not in dispute.

Ghana needs the NPP as the only political Party with the resolve, temperament, and attitude to develop the country. However, more disputed is whether and to what extent it matters how we arrive at the choices we present to voters and, specifically, whether and to what extent we need to be internally democratic to promote democracy within the broader Ghanaian society.

Answers to these issues may differ, depending on whether our focus is on process or outcomes: party electoral success versus party maintenance.

The 2024 election defeat is an instructive and teachable moment calling us to put aside some of our cherished illusions and come to terms meaningfully regarding the next steps. Our inconsolable, self-inflicted defeat is an opportunity for a dramatic break with certain old-order principles.

It's hard to conceive of a colossal, missed opportunity and failure where we managed to snatch such a monumental defeat from the jaws of victory. But, before harvesting political accountability, we must rebuild a strengthened, responsive organization with a deep-rooted tradition of individual and institutional accountability, trust, legitimacy, and order.

Frankly, there are issues over which there should be no disagreement.

Let's not suddenly exhibit a bewildering array of capricious behavior in our rebuilding process. Let's scramble the dense network of goodwill that Ghanaians have reposed in the NPP over the last thirty-two years.

Hewitt et al. (2014) discuss the idea of "transformative sensibilities," where our transformative leaders must interrogate and disrupt what we've taken for granted for years. Our utmost concern must, therefore, guard against the unanticipated consequences of the eventual Party we will craft if we follow the simplifying logic of emulation without commensurate attention to NPP's particular social and political context.

V.O. Key Jr. (1942), the eminent American political scientist, recommends a unifying focus on strengthening our intra-party democracy and decision-making process without leaving out the massive constellation of goodwill, interests, collective memories of good and bad experiences, and practical knowledge about what's suitable for NPP.

Timothy Snyder of Yale University cautions against complacency. Unfortunately, a section of NPP leaders and supporters have already convinced themselves that there is nothing in the future but more of the same. They are inclined to accept the politics of inevitability, path-dependent that history would move in only one direction.

Let's advance and project an agenda of strength, boldness, risks, and grit that remembers the past, engages the present, and imagines a new future. Let's not succumb to sycophantic behaviors or acquiesce to issues and arguments we know are wrong. Let's oppose self-aggrandizement and inimical, subversive factions whose zero-sum attitude would have resulted in the Party's current position in the electorate.

None of us, as NPP diehards, can honestly say that we're not concerned about the future of our Party and its place in Ghana's consolidating democracy. The disturbing observation is that while we see the internal dislocations in our Party, we transfer such dislocations into government.

Why have we been silent so long in the face of egregious, self-serving, selfish behavior and pronouncements with muted responses? Why have we been silent about glaring "discontinuities" stricken by departure from party norms? Based on the outcome of the 2024 presidential primary, how is our Party's democratic Bonafide?

As the major significant opposition in our democracy, NPP's action must be the benchmark and make political parties a respectable institutional component of Ghanaian politics. We should be aware that organizations "implode and not explode."

Management theorists and practitioners acknowledge that resilient organizations do not often bounce back from change or misfortune; they jump forward. Such organizations absorb turbulent shocks and turn them into sustainable, inclusive growth opportunities.

Resilient organizations know that when challenges and setbacks emerge, they assess the situation, reorient themselves, double down on what's working, and walk away from those not working. Such organizations cultivate resilience driven by crises and opportunities for significant, lasting advantages over competitors. (McKinsey, 2022).

Let's be aware that much of the destruction of political parties has come from people who claim allegiance to it. While the American Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, was attacking political parties, he was simultaneously actively building one.

Today, we find many who praise the NPP and claim to support our tradition when, in fact, they have been dismantling it.

Let's boldly advance ideas that may seem radical today, but the important realization is how we implement them. But, what is essential to keep in mind is the extent to which these proposals may weaken or strengthen our Party's preferences.

If we are to realize the potential that the last election has revealed and begin moving toward that stronger Party, we must finally transcend our downsized politics of excluded alternatives. In American political tradition, the Progressives' reverence for Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson as America's most inspirational politicians is well placed.

However, their greatness was not due exclusively to their philosophical genius or rhetorical gifts. Their philosophical understanding of America's "central idea"- that "all men are created equal"- needed an institutional anchor, and they saw the anchor in political parties.

For NPP, maintaining our "central idea" of "development in freedom" requires a system that accommodates the ambition of "the family of lions," or "the tribe of the eagle," to borrow Abraham Lincoln's language, but at the same time forces those ambitions to perpetuate our "central idea."

The Progressive movement, in the American sense, failed because they never came to terms with the relationship between their means and ends. It was obsessed with its social and political ends and glossed over the means of achieving those ends.

Although the movement spoke eloquently about democracy and justice, its extreme desire for democratic results made it too impatient to calculate carefully the appropriate means to achieve the desired results. Most party reformers elsewhere have made a similar error.

They were obsessed with ends and erred in the opposite direction. Reforms may be necessary from time to time, but the most successful reforms have always been those that would move us closer to the ideals set forth by our tradition, not those that claim to transcend them. NPP lost the last election but has done an excellent job preserving its principles and traditions.


In general, we would not begin a road trip without a map. Although there is no single formula that we should turn to and expect results, time-tested models and methods have proven effective as the foundation of electoral quality, with consideration for the legendary Donabedian's (1960) formula for quality based on his triangle: structure, process, and outcome.

How often do we focus on structure and process without measuring our outcomes, creating our scorecard, tracking, trending, and benchmarking our results? Arthur W. Jones said that "all organizations are perfectly aligned to get the results they get."

We hear the promising winds of transformation and struggle forming, lighting up, dying down, and turning back on themselves. Signs and sounds of anxiety, confusion, hatred, retrenchment, retreat, and plain fear have engulfed us, but we must not allow rightful, effective change to elude us.

As we reflect on rebuilding and recapturing power in 2028, let's be aware of the notion that there are no secured privileged places in opposition, no dignity in self-denial of our weakened position must guide us, and as the legendary Paul Robeson reminds us, "the battlefront is everywhere; there is no sheltered rear." Electoral defeat typically tests a political party's resilience.

Whether this is a time of optimism for the NPP or the end of an era will significantly alter Ghanaian politics and discourse on history. This time, the ire was exclusive to the NPP as the electorate favored the NDC.

We cannot adopt quick-fix schemes to solve structural deformities requiring radical reform. It's crucially imperative that the burdens of adjustment are shared equitably during a time of profound organizational and political adjustment.

Fellow Kukrudites, we have a self-inflicted problem staring us in the face. As we attempt to remake our Party to reflect the times, let's soberly and deeply reflect on the Party that Ghana needs for its development. We must intentionally redesign NPP not only for us but also for Ghana.

It is democratically healthy to nurse disagreements on policy and issues but devoid of threats, myopic worldviews, political and societal norm violations, and vilifying rhetoric. However, once polarized, it wouldn't be easy to use logic and reason to convince opponents to think or reframe their views otherwise.

NPP is currently stuck in this outrage spiral within the Party and the electorate. We need to tamp down the growing unnecessary animosity in dealing with ourselves. Sadly, we've gone from internal politics of disagreement to those based on dislike, distrust, disrespect, and often even disgust.

Whatever we do, let's know that we ran the play perfectly in 2024 but achieved a different devastating outcome; we now know we cannot go into the 2028 and future elections with the same political playbook as in 2024. Remember Abraham Lincoln's oft-quoted words: "The people—the people—are the rightful masters of congresses and the courts—not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it."

Reflecting on rebuilding and reclaiming power in 2028 and beyond, we need structural and transformational change in the Party as an organization, the Party in government, and the Party in the electorate to realign for victory in 2028. The kind of change that NPP needs transcends individuals.