An aspiring regional chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Upper East Region, Filson Awankua, has said the party did not do well in the region during the 2016 general elections due to disunity and fractions within its rank and file.
Speaking to Samuel Mbura, host of A1 Radio’s DayBreak Upper East programme in Bolgatanga on Monday, the aspirant attributed the poor performance of the party in the region, especially in the last general elections to what he described as disunity and major cracks within it.
“Why did we lose? Because if you are examining a situation, you must put the why. Why did we lose? As I put it, I’m always home examining things and I have realised that there are a lot of cracks, major cracks in the party. We have so many walls that cannot bring us together and we had a lot of disunity, a lot of party executives doing things and the parliamentary candidates also doing another thing. So there was no synergy. In any environment, when there is no synergy, when there is no unity, you know that you are bound to fail.” He contended.
According to him, should he win the Saturday’s election as regional chairman, he would embark on a massive unity drive in the party across the region, across the polling stations which he described as the base of the party and across the region.
He said: “When you are able to unite the grassroots, unite the party, at the constituency level, polling station level, come up to the region, in fact, a house that is together can stand against every storm.”
He further stated that even with adequate supply of resources to the party at these levels without unity, the resources would not serve their intended purposes.
“When that is achieved, the unity achieved, we are building the party around the elephant and not around blocks, not around camps, not around the so-called power brokers within and you will realise that everybody who has an idea will get involved.” He emphasized.
Mr. Awankua observed that the party was endowed with party elders at all levels whose contributions to uniting members and executives should have be pivotal but unfortunately, the current crop of executives have failed to explore that thus the disunity which affected the performance of the party in the region.
He therefore promised to engage them play a central role in uniting the party from the grassroots to the regional level.
Out of a total of fifteen parliamentary seats in the Upper East Region, the governing NPP has only three seats – Tempane, Zebilla and Navrongo central. Though the number of seats for the NPP before the 2016 generations elections was one and increased to three, the only seat the party occupied before the election was snatched from the party.
Though the programme sought to provide a platform for the five aspiring chairmen to showcase why delegates should elect them and what they would do should they be elected, the incumbent regional chairman, Murtala Mohaamed and Isaac Agongo did not feature.
Alhaji Abdallah Otito Achuliwor and Lawyer Anthony Namoo were also on the programme.
Source:TopNewsGhana.com
