Former New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential aspirant, Dr. Arthur Kobina Kennedy, has called on the party’s current national executives to seek a fresh mandate as the party looks to regroup ahead of the 2028 general elections.
Speaking on The Big Issue on Saturday, June 21, 2025, Dr. Kennedy stressed that the move would not be a vote of no confidence but rather a healthy democratic process to reaffirm or refresh leadership from the grassroots.
“I think the first order of business is that our current executives should renew their mandate,” he stated. “It doesn’t mean anybody did anything wrong or otherwise. But they should go for a fresh mandate.”
He emphasized the need for a grassroots-based assessment of the executives’ performance, suggesting that party members should be given the chance to evaluate who should remain and who should be replaced.
“Sometimes, when they go to the grassroots, they might say executive A was good, so their mandate needs to be renewed, but executive B should go and sit and let a new person come and help,” he explained.
Referencing Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s earlier “bus analogy” regarding party reform, Dr. Kennedy said the NPP must seriously reflect on who should remain on board.
“To use Dr. Bawumia’s analogy — if you consider the exit polling and what Musa Dankwa said — maybe there are certain people who need to be on the hypothetical bus he talked about. So we get new drivers and new leaders.”
Dr. Kennedy further pointed to the party’s electoral decline as a wake-up call.
“We need to look at those who took us from one of Ghana’s strongest mandates to those who took us to the weakest mandate.”
