The Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, Mavis Hawa Koomson, has opined that the best candidate who can help the New Patriotic Party(NPP) to break the ‘8’ in the 2024 general election is Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.
According to Hawa Koomson, the Vice President has worked with President Akufo Addo for the two terms he has served therefore he is the best person who can narrate the achievements of the NPP and why Ghanaians must vote for the party in 2024.
“Dr. Bawumia is the very one who can break the ‘8’,” she said. “He has worked with President Akufo-Addo for the past eight years. He knows where we started from and where we are now. So he has a story to tell. Apart from Dr. Bawumia, nobody can tell the story of the government, and that is why we are all supporting him”, Hawa Koomson noted in an interview monitored by The Ghana Report on Citi TV.
Hawa Koomson also dismissed the notion that Bawumia is not a decision-maker in the government. She said that while he is the Vice President, he is not a rubber stamp and can make his own decisions when he is in charge.
“If you say he’s part of the government, yes, but he’s only a vice, he’s supporting the president,” she said, adding “He has no say. When the president is not there, Dr Bawumia cannot chair cabinet meetings, or sign any documents unless the president asks him to do it on his behalf. So when he’s in charge, he can make decisions on his own”.
Hawa Koomson predicted that Bawumia would win the NPP’s presidential primaries in November by a huge margin.
She added that Bawumia is the most popular and experienced candidate in the race and that he has the support of the party’s grassroots.
However, the opposition National Democratic Congress(NDC) says that Bawumia’s candidacy poses no concern for the party because the NPP will lose in the 2024 election.
The Director of Conflict Resolution for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Abraham Amaliba in an interview noted that “Dr Bawumia is the least person that the NDC is afraid of. Indeed, we would have been afraid of Alan more than Bawumia… Indeed, for us, if Bawumia emerges the winner, our campaign will be much easier than if it were Alan Kyerematen”.
The NPP will elect its flagbearer for the 2024 elections on November 4.
Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia will be contesting with Kennedy Agyapong, the Assin Central MP; Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, the former Minister for Agriculture; and Francis Addai-Nimoh.