Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has advised electorates to vote against the NDC stating that the NDC’s assumption to power will derail the gains made under the Akufo-Addo-led government. According to the Vice President, the market of NDC is empty and bereft of ideas and policies that could lift many Ghanaians out of their current situation.
The New Patriotic Party government, in the view of Vice President Dr. Bawumia, has performed creditably well and, to a larger extent, holds the key to propelling the country onto a path of sustained growth and development.
During a visit of the Vice President Dr. Bawumia to the chiefs and elders of Ashaiman community as part of his four-day Greater Accra Tour which ended on Sunday, 4th of October, the Vice President implored the electorate to ditch shopping in the NDC’s empty market and rather turn to the fully stocked mall of the NPP where electorates are promised of goods.
The Ashaiman constituency, according to Vice President Dr. Bawumia, is one of the very important constituencies in the political discourse of Ghana since the fourth republic. “This is a place that is very very important in the political discourse of Ghana. Anybody who wins Ashaiman constituency has a good chance of winning the presidential seat because of the huge numbers here”, the Vice president explained during his interaction with the chiefs and elders of the Ashaiman community.
Electoral fortunes of the constituency, however, have tilted in favour of the NDC since 1992. The New Patriotic Party has won the parliamentary seat for the constituency just once. The party that has benefitted from these electoral gains has, as the vice president posits, failed to address the many challenges within the constituency.
The deplorable situation of one of the most populous constituencies in the Greater Accra Region could be blamed on the NDC’s failure to use mandates and the electoral victories in transforming the lives of constituents, Dr. Bawumia intimated. He has however appealed to electorates to forego the thought of voting again for the NDC. “So let’s change the market we are shopping in. Come into the NPP market and we will deliver the goods”.
Voting for the NDC, the Vice President contends, will mean a vote for retrogression, a phenomenon which will serve as a drawback to Ghana’s quest for advancement to become a proper middle-income country.
The wheels of political campaign train are still grinding hard as parties and their functionaries journey across the length and breadth of the country to canvass for votes ahead of the December 7 polls. The two major political parties, the NDC and NPP, have adopted varied approaches to access electorates in the midst of COVID-19 although there is ample evidence of breaches of health and safety protocols.
That notwithstanding, parties have leveraged on opportunities to drum home and further expound on promises made in their respective manifestos. Messages have been nuanced with rhetoric centering on track records. The NPP has been comparatively vocal latching on what it has described as a stellar performance over the past four years, touting its achievements and social interventions, key amongst them being the implementation of the free SHS policy.