‘NPP will do post-mortem’ – ‘Worried Mac Manu acknowledges poor performance

A ‘worried’ 2020 NPP campaign manager, Peter Mac Manu, has revealed the party would conduct a post-mortem on its performance as its once decisive parliamentary majority has evaporated.

“We will go and sit down and do a post-mortem,” he said moments after the Electoral Commission announced that President Nana Akufo-Addo won re-election by 515,524 more votes.

In 2016, Akufo-Addo won by nearly twice this figure.

But with incumbency politics coming into play, the president dropped votes. Peter Mac Manu said despite the drop, the party has achieved its objective of securing a first-round victory in the presidential elections.

While the party has avoided a feared run-off after the commission declared President Akufo-Addo winner by garnering 6,730,413 votes and his contender John Mahama had 6,214,889.

The NPP held a 63-seat advantage over the NDC in the 275-member parliament.

But in 2020, this historic margin has evaporated in what is looking like a pyrrhic victory.

The NPP and NDC is projected to win 137 seats apiece with a sacked NPP MP winning the Fomena constituency as an independent candidate, potentially now the kingmaker in parliament.

There are only two seats left to be declared.

While these projections remain provisional, Peter Mac Manu acknowledged the results is ‘one major area of concern.’

“We are worried,” he said and conceded the party’s management of the parliamentary elections was problematic.

There was furious reactions in the party after the national executives decided to shield some MPs from being contested in the primaries.

READ: NPP Parliamentary forms play catch me if you can

Several of them, the Majority leader, the first deputy speaker of parliament, education ministers and a slew of the president’s Cabinet with an election to win were protected from internal contests.

In constituencies where contests were allowed, party leaders played catch-me-if-you–can with aspirants who wanted to pick up nomination forms.

Several aspirants were controversially contested, triggering appeals, many of them unsuccessful leading to some aspirants going independent.

President Nana Akufo-Addo while on the campaign trail was aware of the disaffections but rallied voters to reject independent candidates insisting he cannot work with party defectors in parliament.

The NPP controversially sacked the Fomena MP from his seat in parliament when he insisted on going independent after losing in the primaries.

He won his seat, earning the trust of his people and putting the governing NPP in an awkward position now that its parliamentary majority is set to be slim at best.