President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has met with all the 42 New Patriotic Party (NPP) defeated Members of Parliament (MPs) in last week’s parliamentary primaries, urging them to overcome their disappointments because the defeat was not the end of their political lives.
According to him, it is expedient to remain firm in the belief that losing elections cannot be the end of a person’s political career, saying “I am a living example”.
The President gave the advice at the Alisa Hotel on Saturday where he was acclaimed as the NPP 2020 presidential nominee by the National Executive Council.
President Akufo-Addo acknowledged that among the MPs who lost were very important personalities in the party who are also playing important roles in Parliament.
He however indicated that in politics, these temporal setbacks happen and said the political class should continue to fear delegates as advised by one-time NPP General Secretary Sir John.
He said, “But we should remain firm in our belief that losing an election cannot be the end of your political life.”
President Akufo-Addo urged both victors and the defeated to quickly unite and go before the country and spread the good news of the NPP government’s performance and achievements.
“This is the message I gave to the 42 members of Parliament who lost when I invited them to the Jubilee House last Thursday evening and I believe the message went down well.
“Especially, if we recollect how impressive several of them are in Parliament”, he added.
According to him, the NPP has a good story to tell and urged the party to go out and tell it on every sector of the Ghanaian lives.
Sympathy to losing candidates
The President further sympathized with the candidates that lost in their bid to represent the party in the December parliamentary elections, especially the sitting MPs.
He urged NPP members to show the difference between the NPP way of tackling problems and the way the opposition party does it.
“We grow the economy, and they shrink it. We create a properly regulated enabling atmosphere for businesses to flourish. They allow chances and speculators to lure citizens into putting their monies into dodgy enterprises.
“They bring our banks and financial services to near collapse and we have to clean up and restore confidence.”
“They plunged us into dumsor, we keep the lights on.”
“They look on clueless as thousands of Ghana’s children exit school at JHS but we bring free SHS and free TVET to prepare our children better to face life.”
“They resort to crude language when faced with difficult arguments, we raise the level of public discourse.”
“We owe it to ourselves and to Ghana to win the elections in December decisively to make sure that we keep the economy on track and not in the hands of people who will run it again into the ground,” he stated.
