Professor Ransford Gyampo is questioning the logic behind the decision by the New Patriotic Patriotic Party (NPP) to set up a committee to investigate its defeat in the 2024 elections, if it is aware that voter apathy caused their downfall.
The University of Ghana lecturer thinks there is more to the ruling party’s defeat than voter apathy, something he says should not be relegated by the party in order to ascertain the true cause of their woes.
According to him, for the NPP members to think that they lost the election because their people did not go out to vote is “propaganda” and amounts to “tickling themselves and laughing.”
“So, in my view, people should stop tickling themselves and laughing if they know that apathy was the reason why they performed abysmally and were defeated in this election,” he said on the KeyPoints on TV3 Saturday, December 28, 2024.
He went on to question the need for a committee of inquiry if the party has concluded that their defeat was caused by their members’ refusal to vote.
“Why are they now setting up a committee to interrogating why they lost?” he quizzed.
“If the reason is just apathy, then it is obvious. Why do you need to set up a committee to go into the reasons why you lost?” he asked further.
The political science lecturer says he started chronicling the factors that led to the NPP’s defeat in 2022, asking the party to consult him for the reasons for their failure rather than going to waste funds to set up a committee.
“I think that they shouldn’t think about spending enough enough money. Come to us for consult, we’ll tell you all the factors that led to the monumental unprecedented electoral defeat of the NPP in the 2024 elections. We started diagnosing and chronicling this in 2022,” he added.
He was speaking based on the NPP’s announcement that it is going to set up a committee to investigate the factors that led to the party’s defeat in the just ended elections, handing the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) a two-thirds majority in parliament and a huge gap in the presidential race.
National Chairman of the party, Stephen Ayesu Ntim, revealed this in a press briefing on Monday, December 23, 2024.
He said the proposed Election Review Committee will engage party stakeholders and the general public to fish out the factors that contributed to the defeat. This, Mr. Ntim noted, will inform the party’s reforms to strengthen it for the future.
“The party will in January 2025 set up an effective and objective Election Review Committee to undertake a postmortem into the outcome of the election. The committee will engage all party stakeholders and the general public on the factors and circumstances leading to our defeat,” he stated.
The party Chairman added that one critical area the committee will examine would be whether to have a constitutional amendment to restructure the party’s internal decision-making, including the mode of electing presidential and parliamentary candidates, as well as party executives.
Gyampo catalogues factors that led to NPP’s monumental defeat in 2024 polls
