Chairman of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Asiedu Nketia, has responded to reports suggesting that he is nursing a presidential ambition.
According to him, it is too early to have such conversations, and therefore, “If we get to the bridge, we will cross it.”
General Mosquito, as he is popularly called, believes the focus eight months after winning an election must never be about who takes over from President Mahama, but rather on how to ensure the government succeeds.
He was speaking to Channel 1 Media when he espoused this position.
The chairman of the NDC’s name has featured greatly in several polls conducted on who will become the next flagbearer of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC).
But he holds the view that it is too early in the day to have such a conversation when the government needs all the focus to succeed.
“I have been monitoring this whole discussion about who is running and who is not running for the presidency in the NDC, but I keep repeating my caution that we have to be very careful about the way we express our ambitions. Whoever succeeds President Mahama will ride on the achievements of this government. So, in your effort to succeed, President Mahama, if you conduct yourself in ways that will disrupt the activities of this government, in ways that will make the government less successful, then you will have a bigger problem when you become flagbearer. That is why I have been cautioning that let us wait till the time,” he stated.
Adding that “President Mahama is only about eight months in office now, and you want to struggle for who will replace him. All the names we are hearing, including my own name, are occupying sensitive positions both in the party and the government. If all of us decide to say that people say I can be president, so let me start organizing, then everybody will be going across the country, appointing campaign coordinators and so on. How do you think that President Mahama can keep the party and government together and focus on achieving anything? If you are a minister and you are overtaken by your desire to be a president, everything you do will be to satisfy your ambition.”
He further noticed that “our situation is worse because you’ll hear about a Chief of Staff being mentioned. If it turns out to be true, the Chief of Staff is establishing structures and making money to prepare for elections, his ministers working under him are doing the same thing, and his chairman, too, is doing the same thing. How will President Mahama be able to put things together for us? So if we are naked and we destroy the government less than a year into President Mahama’s regime, how is anybody who eventually succeeds going to have sufficient basis to tell Ghanaians to vote for us?”
