Don’t repeat 2016 mistakes – Goosie Tanoh warns NDC

Politics of Monday, 31 December 2018

Source: Myjoyonline.com

2018-12-31

Goosie Tanoh56.jpegNDC flagbearer hopeful, Augustus ‘Goosie’ Tanoh

Presidential nominee hopeful of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Goosie Tanoh, has admonished members of his political party not to repeat the mistakes of the party prior to the 2016 general elections which he says caused the defeat of the party after eight years in government.

According to Goosie Tanoh, many Ghanaians especially independent voters, rejected the NDC during the 2016 polls simply because they felt the party was not palatable to voters, including its own members.

He argued that the party leadership were perceived to have “thrown away” the party’s founding principles of probity and accountability, social justice, grassroots empowerment, grassroots participation in decision making and assumed “a foreign culture” that are aliens to the values of the party.

Mr. Tanoh, who between 1991 and 1993 was Chairman of the Forum for Sustainable Development (FSD), the body that put together the original NDC constitution, defined its values and emblems and organized its first congress, indicated that the denial of the founding principles by some party leaders led to loss of confidence of mass base and independent voters.

Speaking at separate meetings with delegates at Ashaiman, Tema West, Tema Central, Tema East constituencies as part of his second leg of campaign tour to the Greater Accra Region, Mr. Tanoh said “in 2016, Ghanaians told us they don’t want us (NDC), NDC people themselves did not go and vote because what they had seen over the last few years was enough, they said enough is enough.”

He continued “they threw away the branches, you will be in your community, people are mobilizing you don’t know who they are but you are a branch chairman or a constituency chairman.”

On polling day, NDC polling agents were not given lunch so some left polling stations to look for food and you know what happened. Our own people deserted us and we must not make those mistakes in 2020.”

He stated “in 2016 voters said NDC did not have a good character so they should go back home (opposition) and correct their mistakes, if you keep doing the same thing over and over and expect to get a different result, you are deceiving yourself.”

Goosie Tanoh, a founding member of the NDC who was very instrumental in the formation of the party, has therefore appealed to the party members to chart a new path by electing him as the party’s new flag bearer to restore the lost principles of the party.

He indicated that anytime the NDC had been faithful to its original founding principles, the party had won national elections convincingly and that leaders of the party over the last few years had betrayed those core values. There is an urgent need for restoration of those morals in the party, he added.

“Vote for me, Goosie Tanoh and let’s build a new NDC and a new Ghana,” Goosie Tanoh, a Rawlings look-alike told delegates at Tema Central on Sunday.

He reiterated the need to reward the grassroots members when the party is in power contrary to the reversed.

Goosie Tanoh also denounced vote-buying and corruption, and encouraged delegates to support the efforts at re-energizing the party’s grassroots by paying their party dues to support activities of the party both in government and out of government.

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