Former Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Koku Anyidoho, has defended his decision to challenge Johnson Asiedu Nketia for the General Secretary position.
Asiedu Nketia trounced the former NDC executive during the party’s last National Delegates Congress, polling 6,642 votes against a mere 1,625 votes for Mr Anyidoho.
Prior to the elections, many had criticised the decision by Mr Anyidoho to contest his boss but he held his ground, promising to surprise his critics with a resounding victory. But that never happened.
Reacting for the first time to what some have called a political suicide, Mr Anyidoho said, contrary to those assertions, he knew what he was doing from the start.
“It was not a reckless decision. It was a well-calculated decision so if you ask me, I have no regrets at all,” he defended on nightly current affairs programme, PM Express on MultiTV, on Wednesday.
Again after his defeat in November last year, some NDC bigwigs like the Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the party, Ade Coker, suggested that the result of the election was a great lesson in humility.
“If Koku had consulted me, I would have asked him to go for another position…it was a wrong move. It was a wrong move. Koku is a nice guy; he is a very nice gentleman but it is a wrong move.
“You see it is like father and son…somebody that you have worked with closely and you go and you want to contest that person. It’s never the best…Every aspect of life there is that lesson,” he said.
But Mr Anyidoho justified his move on PM Express citing examples in Ghana’s politics of defeated candidates who have returned — sometimes after many tries — to clinch a victory eventually.
“You think that when President Kufuor lost in 1996 it was a political miscalculation? You think that when President [John Evans Atta] Mills did not win in 2000 it was a miscalculation? Or you think that when Nana Akufo-Addo did not win in 2008 and 2012 it was a miscalculation?
“Like I said, if you observe the trend, President Kufuor didn’t win 1996 he came back and won 2000. President Mills didn’t win in 2000, he won 2008. Nana Akufo-Addo didn’t win 2008, 2012 he won 2016. So there is nothing suicidal about it. It’s an election. I don’t think anybody has a patent to any position. So the [position] was open and I chose to contest,” he told show host, Evans Mensah.
He said in conformity with the party’s rules, he went through the processes to contest, “elections were run, the delegates voted, the EC [Electoral Commission] declared results. In the supreme interest of the party, you accept the declared results and you move on. So nothing suicidal.”
