The election of the General, Mr. Johnson Asiedu Nketia, better known as General Mosquito as the Chairman of the NDC and Mr. Fifi Kwetey as their General secretary is a repetition of the 2008 election all over again and one cannot sit but wonder how it will all play out in the next election season.
I’d like to believe the NPP will not sit aloof once again for the NDC to outsmart them, and I would like to also believe that the NDC is not returning with the exact strategies that worked for them 14 years ago.
Ghana experienced a new dawn when the much-awaited change in government finally happened in the year 2000.
The 2000 elections ushered in a new party after a long 19 years of a one-party rule that is a long eleven years as PNDC and another eight years as NDC by the same people. Majority of Ghanaians were excited for this change.
When President Kufuor and the NPP took over the reins of power, the country saw so much development and improvement that, everybody thought the NDC party had collapsed. The NPP party also believed their party had done so marvelously well that, the next election was a given. They thought the biggest fight here was just the election of their flagbearer and not the general election.
The NPP naively thought they had already won the election, so they put all their energy in the selection of their flagbearer and once that election was over, they started behaving as though the general election was over. A scenario that is already rearing its ugly head with the resignation of some ministers from government and the subsequent announcement to contest for the baton to lead the NPP in the coming elections.
The NDC seems poised in repeating their old strategies by going in for their tried and tested duo as national executives. If this trend continues, the same tricks used by the NDC to oust the best performing government of J.A Kufour and the NPP is eminent.
Here are some of the simple but smart strategies the opposition NDC party used to wrestle power from the NPP government.
- The NDC is the only party in Ghana that was bold to form a propaganda secretariat. They also ensured that, they chose a propaganda secretary that was not afraid to lie.
They chose Mr Fifi Kwetey who brought all the seriousness, the sadness and the anger every single Ghanaian had to bear. He was able to lie with so much confidence to the point that, the then President and his presidential candidate questioned themselves.
2.They started early.
Their campaign to wrestle power came early. They started early by recruiting the ordinary persons to campaign for them. They used commercial drivers to create a dissatisfactory conversion about the ruling party. Every time anyone took a commercial vehicle to and from Accra, the driver and one person he mysteriously saw boarding his bus will start the conversation. This was usually where the passenger sat at the back seat. This way they both had to shout so that all the passengers could hear what they were talking about.
3. They divided the people and conquered.
They made the masses believe that, the country was taken over by the Akans and that the minority was in trouble. They made it appear as, many non- Akan speaking people were being persecuted especially in the case of the incarceration of Lawyer Tsikata and Dan Abodakpi.
They also went to the Akans and made them believe that, the NPP has taken them for granted and done nothing to improve their lives. They also told them that, those in government had enriched themselves at their expense. With this, nothing the party said made sense to their own party members and their sympathizers.
4. They campaigned that, they were modest and the NPP was profligate.
They used the humble beginnings and lifestyle of their candidate as a yardstick to proof their point that, because Prof Mills was born to a poor family and Nana Addo was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he did not understand the suffering of the masses and that, Poof Mills was more likely to understand their situations. They also went steps further to create fake property and money owned by the government officials.
5. They said the NPP was divided.
They forced the Ghanaian to believe that the outgoing president and his candidate were enemies and that, their former president, President Rawlings and his candidate, Prof. Mills had the father and son situation.
6. They made nonsense of all the NPP’s campaigns.
They countered every single NPP campaign message with a modest poor person’s lifestyle campaigns.
7. They took the election as war.
The then candidate Prof Mills made it clear that he was only going to accept the election results if the election was not stolen and refused to say he will denounce any form of violence by his supporters. He said if no one steals the election, there will be no war. He said this on every single platform he got including the debate stages and a soundbite the radio stations, notably, peace FM played severally during the electioneering campaign.
8. It was an all-hands-on deck
It was an all-hands-on deck situation for the NDC whiles the NPP drove most of their best people to early retirement, relegated some to the background leading to breakaways as independent candidates.
The NDC extended a peace offering to all the members that left the party after their Swedru declaration.
9. They were vigilant
They monitored the election results and sent their best people to the EC strong room to collate the results of the election and declared themselves winners before the results were counted. When they realized they had won many of the parliamentary seats, they knew they were in a comfortable lead. At this stage, the closest the NPP could get was a run-off.
I will be surprised if the NPP allows these two propagandists the free space they enjoyed in 2008 to fester their lies and sit helpless. I also do not expect the NDC to also come with the same archaic strategy but then again, who knows? The politician never learns so we may not see any change at all and a rerun of the 2008 elections will be replayed before our very eyes.