Without mincing words, let me say this loudly and clearly: the NDC’s electoral defeat at the hands of the NPP in the recently concluded general elections stings, it is devastatingly painful. Many in the NDC, indeed, are still agonizing over the loss.
But herein lies the fundamental question: when is the vanquished NDC going to decide that it is time to confine the catastrophic event to the scrap heap of history. In fact, when is the party going to forget the humiliation of its poor performance at the polls and reboot for the future? There are, after all, voters to woo and elections to win.
The post election blame game of finger pointing and scapegoating certain individuals for the woeful failure of the NDC to retain power has recently gained currency. Everybody is weighing in with their wisdom.
But apportioning blame after a major debacle like an electoral loss, is an exercise in futility. It serves no useful purpose and all it does is further exacerbate intra-party tensions. Mr. John Jerry Rawlings, founder of the NDC, is the latest party stalwart to cast stones and to assign blame for his party’s disastrous showing at the polls.
The once strongman of Ghana, in his usual bombastic self, pinned the loss on the party’s “uncouth” “corrupt” “uncultured” and “loose” talkers. While the former president has a point — yes, some in the party talked too much to our comfort —- I beg to differ.
If his explanation is anything to go by, then the equally foul-mouth Mr. Donald Trump would have lost the U.S presidential election by a landslide. And so would the deplorable Mr. Rodrigo Duterte, President of the Philippines.
These two men flagrantly violated conventional campaign rules with their obnoxious behavior; they lobbed insults at their political enemies and made disparaging remarks about minorities—in Mr. Trump’s case- –he scolded Muslims, African Americans, and Hispanics.
Despite these outrages, both men easily won their respective races which tells us a lot about a political dynamic that Mr. Rawlings conveniently forgot to mention in his speech to the large crowd that had gathered to hear him speak at the 31st December Revolution ceremony in Accra last week.
And that trend is the unstoppable wind of political change blowing across the globe.It has been contagious and Ghanaians certainly weren’t immune to it when they went to the polls on December 7, 2016. They voted overwhelmingly to replace the NDC with the NPP.
How I wish Mr. Rawlings hadn’t been so forthright about his convictions; he did not have to publicly express his disgust with those he is blaming for the party’s fate.
I would rather he had called a closed door meeting and discussed his concerns with party leaders. It is absurd to blame any single individual for the NDC’s electoral defeat. There was a collective failure on many fronts.
And, crucially, the defeat had very much to do with the keen desire of Ghanaians to replace the current crop of political leaders with a new batch. It was their choice, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. It is a known fact that the NDC failed to connect to the ordinary Ghanaian voter.
A party in power for eight long years inadvertently falls into this trap; there was clearly a detachment from the average man and woman which the NPP clearly exploited to its advantage.
Now that the elections are behind us, the NDC should stop whining and grabbing at straws and put a screeching halt to the blame game. The most important thing it can do for its millions of supporters is to get ready for the next battle. It sure can do this by getting its its house in order. It is not all doom and gloom.