Why join Bawumia to Alan’s ticket – Mpiani questions Akomea’s proposal

Former Chief of Staff in President John Agyekum Kufuor’s era, Kwadwo Mpiani has questioned Nana Akomea’s proposal to join Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen to lead the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to Election 2024.
“The problem as I [Mpiani] see it here is that, who is going to be the presidential candidate and who is going to be a running mate?”

“And in politics also, we all have our ambitions. Maybe it is my ambition to be a president not a vice-president. And so why do you bring [me], because I’m trying to contest to be a presidential candidate, why do you join me with another person for me to become say, a vice-presidential candidate.”

“So I don’t know, it is easier said than done. Ambitions in politics is different. Somebody wants to be a minister, somebody wants to be a vice-president.”

“Somebody’s ambition is to become a president. And if his ambition is to become a president, maybe, if you suggest to him to become a running mate which will make him a vice-president, he will say thank you, I’m not interested. So that is the way I see it.”

Mr Mpiani was speaking in a radio interview with Accra based Citi FM which was monitored by Graphic Online, Tuesday evening [April 26, 2022].

He was reacting to an earlier interview by Nana Akomea on the same platform where he [Akomea] proposed a Bawumia-Alan ticket, which he said was the sure way for the NPP to go into Election 2024.

Mpiani’s reaction

But reacting, Mr Kwadwo Mpiani said it will be “a very difficult thing to do.”

“If the two of them don’t even get on well, though, we are all in the same party…, [same] ideology, the philosophy of the party, but that doesn’t mean that the two of us [them] can really work together as the president and the vice-president,” he said.

Mr Mpiani said he thinks the party should allow the contest [presidential primary] to happen.

“It is just like a very senior party person came to me to talk to me about some of these issues and he was proposing something like a compromise to avoid divisions in the party and I said, avoiding divisions in the party is fine but how do you get the compromise, how do you get the compromise in such situations.”

“I think the party should be mature enough to decide that we want Mr ‘A’, if Mr ‘A’ gets it and he thinks he wants any other contestant to become his running mate, he should talk to that person, if that person is interested, fair enough, if that person is not interested, find another person you can work with.”

“Because we belong to the same party and we are contesting for a same position, does not mean that I will want to be your vice, it doesn’t work that way. It can work, it may work, but I think it is a difficult proposition, that’s the way I see it,” Mr Mpiani said in the Citi FM interview.

Akomea’s proposal

Nana Akomea, a former member of parliament and a leading communications member of the governing NPP had in the interview with Citi FM suggested that a Bawumia-Alan ticket is the sure way for the NPP to go into Election 2024.

He said it was clear that Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and the Trade and Industry Minister, Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen are the two frontrunners to succeed President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Nana Akomea, himself a former Communications Director of the NPP therefore called for consensus-building within the party for the frontrunners to be allowed to lead the party for 2024.

In the interview, Nana Akomea did not specify which one of them should lead and who should be the running mate.

“If Alan won, he is most likely to choose a running mate from the north. If Bawumia won, he is most likely to choose a running mate from south, the two of them, they are the leaders, everybody knows. The other people can be very gentle and will serve the party well but we have always known the frontrunners, haven’t we, and the frontrunners today are Alan and Bawumia.

“Now in all the previous primaries, the two frontrunners, did not satisfy the north/south divide, [Prof] Adu Boahen and [former President J.A.] Kufuor.”

“I will want a certain consensus to be built within the party to have the two of them running together. It will save us an acrimonious…, and in all, the party [rules] provides [that] the primaries should be in an election year when we are in office, so it is going to avoid an acrimonious primary which the party may not recover fully from.”

Advice to Election Committee

Nana Akomea who is the Managing Director of Intercity STC Coaches Limited called on the election committee of the NPP to ensure that the violence that characterized the polling station level elections of the party does not repeat itself in the constituency elections beginning April 28, 2022.

“The NPP primaries, so far, we can do better, we haven’t finished, we can. We’ve seen quite some significant problems at the polling station level, so we could’ve done better. We also have other elections coming up… so far, we could’ve done better and I’m hoping that those in charge have taken notice of the difficulties and ensure that these difficulties are minimised.