Accra, July 17 GNA – Mr Alban Kingsford Sumana
Bagbin, Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament has partly attributed the electoral
defeat of the National Democratic Congress in 2016 to President Mahama who
allegedly surrounded himself with political greenhorns.
He said: A sheep had led a pride of NDC lions
into defeat because the President had surrounded himself with disrespectful
political greenhorns who insulted everybody and cut him off from the leadership
of the party.”
Speaking in an exclusive interview with the
Ghana News Agency after making some allegations on an Accra-based Radio
station, the Nadowli/Kaleo Legislator likened former President John Dramani
Mahama to a sheep that had led a pride of lions to a crushing defeat in the
2016 general election.
“I am sure you know – ‘when a sheep leads
lions into battle, they will be defeated, but when a lion leads sheep into
battle, they win’,” Mr Bagbin said in an exclusive interview with the Ghana
News Agency.
“Former President Mahama had led the country
without the party. The evidence is clear, even our respected founder who is
revered even by our opponents was eventually estranged from his own baby. Ask
yourself, what could ever make a mother abandon her own child? It should tell
you that President Rawlings was really pushed away,” Mr Bagbin said.
He said the NDC failed woefully in power under
Mahama because the government which had abandoned the party, had also abandoned
the pillars of politics.
The pillars of politics, he said included; the
media, technocrats and the party itself as the mother ship that were woefully
abandoned to their fate.
“As a party, we have been so unfair to our own
media. My heart bleeds that we had been in power for eight years and it was
under our reign that our own newspapers, such as The Enquirer and the Palaver
collapsed.
“Today, where is The Republic, where is The
Ghanaians Voice? Even Montie is struggling to come back on air. We were in
power for eight years and we did nothing to build our own mouthpiece. But in
modern day politics, the media is everything because every political party has
good plans and works hard to achieve them; but while on it the people must see
the genuine efforts even if results are hard to come by. Without the media, how
do you get the people to appreciate your effort?”
Mr Bagbin said, one of the woes of the NDC was
because it allowed the NPP to capture and control the media landscape and that
it was even more in their alleged disappointing performance.
“It is not that we do not have technocrats in
the NDC, we have, but the NPP attracts more. And even the ones that we have, we
are pushing them away because we think politics is a matter of charity.”
Mr Bagbin said the party should change the
mind-set of their faithful as the solution to the myriad mistakes that made the
party unpopular in 2016 polls.
“We must first and foremost be clear in our
minds that politics is not only about sacrifice; people who sacrifice must
benefit when the opportunities come around. Therefore we must build our media,
empower them also to become empires like our opponents have done with theirs.
We must put in place measures for technocrats to feel welcomed in our party and
we must make our own party sustainable in these turbulent seas called politics.
“We must also not forget our grassroots; you
are an ingrate to ride on their support and sacrifices into office and then
when you get there you abandon them and say you are father for all,” he added.
He said efforts were underway to put the party
back on a winsome footing and that could be achieved only when the party hierarch
respected the recommendations of the Professor Kwesi Botchwey recommendations.
GNA