General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) John Boadu has said that he cannot be blamed for the number of seats the party lost in the 2020 general elections.
He explained that in most areas where the government took critical decisions to resolve some national problems, decisions that inadvertently affected the livelihoods of some persons, the party suffered politically in those areas.
Prior to the 2020 polls, the NPP comfortably controlled 169 seats as against the 106 controlled by the NDC.
The NPP lost 37 seats in the last elections to now control 137 seats, the same number for the NDC and one independent lawmaker.
Speaking on the New Day show with Johnnie Hughes on Wednesday, June 1, a day after his campaign launch on Tuesday, May 31, Mr Boadu said “Sometimes, a major decision by the government which in itself is to help the overall goal and benefits of the people, for instance, the issue about President’s decision to clamp down on galamsey, the overall effect is a clean environment for us, clean and all. But in all those areas where the task force implemented the directive, we lost the seats because now, the livelihood of the people is gone.
“If you take the coastal areas, you will realize that it has to do with premix fuel and issues surrounding it, so sometimes the more you even begin to offer the development depending on the instant benefits of the people, you may not even get the results but in the long run, for instance, our decision to rationalize the banking sector led to a lot of people not losing their resources but some people lost their jobs. But the overall effect is that if we had not done so we will break down the economy, and people will lose their income and their jobs. So even the loss that we lost the greater effect is that we have a system that worked.”
Asked who should be blamed collectively, for the several seats the NPP lost, he said “collectively, it is the party. Because one thing about the party is that all decisions emanate from either the steering committee or the National Executive Committee or the National Council.”
During his campaign launch on Tuesday, he assured that the mistakes that were made resulted in the party losing a number of seats.
“It is true in 2020, yes we won the presidential but we lost the great majority of our parliamentary seats. One thing that one must understand is that there are seats that are called borrowed seats. For instance, in 2016 we snatched 55 seats from the NDC. Out of these 55 seats 23 of them, we lost the Presidential.
“We won Parliamentary and lost presidential. Going into 2020, I knew it, some of the constituencies we were going to lose anyway because we won the Parliamentary with close to 33 percent.
“In some cases, it is because the NDC parliamentary candidate or parliamentarians went independent against their own party so the votes split and we won. So some of these things, in doing the analysis, for some of us who have been working with these numbers, and we know why some of the seats are lost.
“The intransigent and strong position that sometimes our own members take, particularly matters arising out of our Parliamentary primaries. I think that is important that we take note of that.
“In addition to losing some of the seats we also snatched 17 and these 17 are seats that we lost presidential in most cases. So if we don’t put some structures together your guess will be as good as mine.”
