NPP's Mustapha Gbande Confident of 2024 Election Win

Elements within the New Patriotic Party (NPP) quietly supported the National Democratic Congress (NDC)’s campaign to return to power, according to Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Mustapha Gbande.

Mr. Gbande made this revelation during an interview on Joy News’ PM Express on December 10, stating the support was “real, deliberate, and driven by concern for the country.” He explained that the NDC’s resurgence stemmed from lessons learned from the 2016 elections.

“We realised that in 2016, Ghanaians made a mistake. The NDC made a mistake by not standing by President John Mahama to deliver on his vision for this country,” he said. He further noted that President Mahama’s departure created a significant void in the nation’s development.

“Because really, after his exit, we saw the vacuum, we saw the gap, and unfortunately for us as a country, to the extent that we couldn’t continue a good project, a good policies of John Mahama, be it roads, hospital projects or school projects, we abandoned all of these things, and so there was a need to come back and to have all of these things delivered.”

However, Mr. Gbande emphasized that the NDC’s victory wasn’t solely their doing. He described it as a broad coalition, acknowledging the contributions of civil society and the media. “We owe it to the civil society, the media, who stood also for what is right, not what is political, but what is nationalistic, the rank and file of our party, who rallied in the belief that we’re leading them to victory, they came on board. Everybody came on board,” he stated.

The surprising disclosure came when Mr. Gbande revealed support even from within the governing NPP. “And we had to achieve this aim, including even elements within the NPP who stood for the right reasons, the right things. I mean, and I will say it frankly, we had enormous support from within the NPP, persons who believe that really that was not the NPP they knew,” he said.

When pressed by host Evans Mensah for specifics on the nature of this support, Mr. Gbande remained guarded. “Varied ways, people who stood for the country, people who just realised that no, enough was enough,” he responded.

Further questioning about financial or campaign assistance also yielded limited details. “Many ways, politically, that is how I would keep it. I’m saying that we’ve had a lot of support from even the NPP base itself, who believe that it was just a matter of time before President Akufo-Addo would have supervised the collapse of a country called Ghana, and they couldn’t have allowed that to happen. And so we won by a large margin,” he explained.

Mr. Mensah then suggested the NDC’s win was more a result of the NPP’s shortcomings than their own strengths. “You saying that you won not because you were superior, but because the NPP was a weakened party, and because of his own misgovernance,” he asked.

Mr. Gbande disagreed with this assessment. “We didn’t win on that route; we won because our party became a strong party. The executives were competent. They were up to the task, from our national chairman to the last person was ready to work as a team,” he asserted. He also credited the party’s flagbearer and running mate for their roles in securing victory.

“We had a very good flag bearer who is credible, who has a vision, and we all can see that vision. We had a running mate who changed the narrative of our politics, our geopolitics, as a first female presidential hopeful at that time. Today, she is Vice President. So all of these were indicators why we won,” he concluded.

Image Source: MYJOYONLINE