NDC’s Unity Walks useless – Ambassador Osei

Former Ghana’s Consul to the United Arab Emirates under former President John Mahama, Ambassador Daniel Osei has described the ‘Unity Walks’ embarked on by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) as a useless exercise in terms of electoral value.

According to him, the party engaged in a worthless exercise as the Unity Walks only served as fanfare for the party supporters to have fun.

The walk has been a key feature of the opposition party’s itinerary to strengthen the bonds between the party hierarchy and the grassroots after it suffered a humiliating defeat by then opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the 2016 general elections. The Unity Walks have been held in all the ten regional capitals of the country with the last edition being held in the Volta Region on Saturday June 10, 2018.

Some party executives and ex-President John Mahama have been addressing the gatherings. It is seen as one of the main activities to help reorganize the NDC and unify the grassroots of the party to help it recapture power in 2020.

But speaking to host Kweku Owusu Adjei on Anopa Kasapa on Kasapa FM Thursday, Ambassador Osei stated that it was sad that resources and energies were spent in an unproductive exercise which had senior party members participating, adding that it appears the NDC has not learnt it’s lesson from the defeat suffered in the last general elections.

“The NDC unity walks have absolutely been useless in terms of electoral value but in terms of energy yes, it’s been helpful because people attended and danced during the event. In terms of electoral value, how many people did we register or identify, what was the message. President Mahama who led the walks whenever he mounted the stage to address the crowd never had a good message that resonated with party members, indeed there was no organized message and it became a generic exercise and a fanfare.

“The ten percent of floating voters we need to win the election whom we lost in the last election don’t enjoy these fanfares, the doves for Mahama, antics from actor John Dumelo is not something that gets their attention. And so in effect the NDC unity walks was meaningless in my judgment.”