The Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr, has urged Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia who is lacing his boot to contest the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) ahead of the 2024 general elections to take lessons from the experience of the late former Vice President Aliu Mahama over his ambitions to lead the party.
“We’ve been around and seen many things happen since 1992. I recall when President Kufuor was leaving power in 2008 and his vice president expressed an interest in replacing his boss. There were many people who told him not to try but he refused. In the final analysis, the delegates of the NPP spoke and they spoke loudly. Aliu Mahama could not win the election. It may happen again or may not happen again.
“If I were Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, I would be taking lessons from what happened in the past. The fact that you are vice president does not give you the automatic right to succeed the president,” he said on Pan African TV.
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According to him, the struggle for the presidential candidate position of the NPP will lead to deep cracks ahead of the next general elections.
He indicated that factionalism and disunity will be in the party once the candidates fully declare their stance to contest and lead the NPP.
“Already we are seeing danger signs, There have been many instances where party loyalists have fought among themselves because the competition has already begun in earnest. These contentions are going to go on,” he stated.
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“If you are running the government at a time like this, where the economy is in total shambles, are these the things that we focus our attention on,” he quizzed.
However, some stalwarts have described Bawumia as formidable in the party and government who keeps playing a crucial role in addressing the needs of Ghanaians.
Earlier, Prof. Aaron Michael Oquaye, the former Speaker of Parliament, proposed that Dr. Bawumia has been loyal to the NPP since he was chosen as the running mate in the run-up to the 2008 general elections, hence he’s capable to lead the NPP to victory in 2024.
Some groups within the NPP have started campaigning for Dr. Bawumia to lead the party in 2024 and the group has already been filing posters across the country.
But Dr. Bawumia said he has not given his consent to the groups within the NPP campaigning for him and his focus right now is to help president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to govern the country.
