Nana Akomea is suggesting a Bawumia-Alan ticket for 2024
He said the two are formidable to succeed Akufo-Addo
But Mpiani disagrees
Kwadwo Mpiani, a former Chief of Staff, has reacted to Nana Akomea's proposal for a ticket involving Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen to lead the New Patriotic Party (NPP) into election 2024.
According to him, the governing NPP
Read full article.should allow the contest [presidential primary] to happen.
In an interview with Citi News monitored by GhanaWeb, the former Chief of Staff explained, "the problem as I [Mpiani] see it here is that, who is going to be the presidential candidate and who is going to be a running mate?"
He added, "in politics also, we all have our ambitions. Maybe it is my ambition to be a president not a vice-president. And so why do you bring [me], because I'm trying to contest to be a presidential candidate, why do you join me with another person for me to become say, a vice-presidential candidate.
"So I don't know, it is easier said than done. Ambitions in politics is different. Somebody wants to be a minister, somebody wants to be a vice-president.
"Somebody's ambition is to become a president. And if his ambition is to become a president, maybe, if you suggest to him to become a running mate which will make him a vice-president, he will say thank you, I'm not interested. So that is the way I see it," Mpiani said.
Nana Akomea, the Managing Director of STC, has indicated that a Bawumia-Alan ticket is the best combination for the NPP to go into the next election.
He said it was clear that Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and the Trade and Industry Minister, Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen are the two frontrunners to succeed President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
But Kwadwo Mpiani noted it will be "a very difficult thing to do."
"If the two of them don't even get on well, though, we are all in the same party..., [same] ideology, the philosophy of the party, but that doesn't mean that the two of us [them] can really work together as the president and the vice-president," he said.
"It is just like a very senior party person came to me to talk to me about some of these issues and he was proposing something like a compromise to avoid divisions in the party and I said, avoiding divisions in the party is fine but how do you get the compromise, how do you get the compromise in such situations.
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"I think the party should be mature enough to decide that we want Mr 'A', if Mr 'A' gets it and he thinks he wants any other contestant to become his running mate, he should talk to that person, if that person is interested, fair enough, if that person is not interested, find another person you can work with.
"Because we belong to the same party and we are contesting for a same position, does not mean that I will want to be your vice, it doesn't work that way. It can work, it may work, but I think it is a difficult proposition, that's the way I see it," Mpiani observed.
What Nana Akomea proposed
Nana Akomea, a former Communication Director of the governing NPP had in the interview with Citi FM suggested that pairing Bawumia and Alan on a ticket is the sure way for the NPP to win the next elections.
He said it was clear that the duo were the two frontrunners to succeed President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo whose term ends in 2024.
He, however, called for consensus-building within the party stressing that "if Alan won, he is most likely to choose a running mate from the north. If Bawumia won, he is most likely to choose a running mate from south, the two of them, they are the leaders, everybody knows. The other people can be very gentle and will serve the party well but we have always known the frontrunners, haven't we, and the frontrunners today are Alan and Bawumia."
He added, "now in all the previous primaries, the two frontrunners, did not satisfy the north/south divide, [Prof] Adu Boahen and [former President J.A.] Kufuor.
"I will want a certain consensus to be built within the party to have the two of them running together... the party [rules] provides [that] the primaries should be in an election year when we are in office, so it is going to avoid an acrimonious primary which the party may not recover fully from.
"The NPP primaries, so far, we can do better, we haven't finished, we can. We've seen quite some significant problems at the polling station level, so we could've done better. We also have other elections coming up... so far, we could've done better and I'm hoping that those in charge have taken notice of the difficulties and ensure that these difficulties are minimized," he added.
