General News of Tuesday, 3 April 2018
Source: citinewsroom.com
2018-04-03
Former President John Mahama
Former President John Dramani Mahama has once again refused to state whether he intends to stand for president in the 2020 elections on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
According to him, his focus at the moment is on contributing towards the party’s restructuring and healing process to make the NDC a stronger force in the elections.
Some supporters of Mr. Mahama, who was defeated in the last election, have consistently urged him to declare his intentions ahead of the next polls. Already, five NDC stalwarts have declared their readiness to lead the party into the polls, including 2nd deputy Speaker, Alban Bagbin and Prof. Joshua Alabi.
But speaking to NDC supporters in London, Mr. Mahama said he will soon make his intentions known.
“There are many who have declared their intention to run when the nominations are opened. I’ve been focusing on the reorganization and so I have not made any intentions and I said rightly that if I declare that I will run or I won’t run it will have implications for the reorganization. If I say I won’t run, then it means that the number of people who will intensify their activity to become the presidential candidates would increase in tempo.”
“If I say I will run, then it will also have implications on the reorganization exercise because then the focus will be the fact that I say I want to run so that is why I’m doing the things I want to do. As the immediate past leader who led the party into the elections of 2016 and we lost, I have a responsibility to make sure that the party is put back on its feet so that whoever leads it has a very good chance of taking us into victory. And that is my focus at the moment,” he added.
‘Mahama is our man’
The 10 Regional Chairmen of the NDC, in November 2017, backed the candidature of John Mahama for election 2020, even without the latter announcing his intention to contest.
The ten chairmen after a meeting issued a communique in which they urged the former President to consider running for the 2020 polls.
58% of voters expect Mahama to contest
A survey conducted by the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana also revealed that 58% of voters believe that Mr. Mahama, will lead the NDC in the 2020 elections.
Head of the Political Science Department, Dr. Bossman Asare, who made this revelation while presenting the survey findings, said: “We wanted to find out who the voters think should lead the party [NDC] in 2020, and overwhelmingly 58% of the candidates we interviewed said they believed Mr. Mahama will become the candidate and a number of them generally said they wanted Mr. Mahama to come.”
“It means when you look at the graph, some people were getting 2 percent. Prof Alabi, Ricketts Hagan, Spio Grabrah, I think all of them were getting less than 7% so we were all surprised,” Dr. Asare added after releasing the report in January 2018.
Bagbin, others via for NDC flagbearership slot
Several members of the NDC including, Nadowli-Kaleo MP, Alban Bagbin, Dr. Spio-Garbrah, former NHIA boss, Sylvester Mensah, Joshua Alabi, former MP for La-Dadekotopon, Nii Amasah Namoale among others, have given indications they may contest the flagbearership position.