Election 2024 Defeat Was Party’s Loss, Not Bawumia’s – Eugene Boakye Antwi

Aspiring General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Eugene Boakye Antwi, says the party’s defeat in the 2024 general elections should not be attributed to Mahamudu Bawumia, insisting that the loss was collective and not personal.

Speaking on Oyerepa Radio, Antwi rejected claims that Dr. Bawumia’s candidature was the cause of the party’s electoral setback.

“Election 2024 defeat was not a Bawumia defeat but an NPP defeat. It’s unfair for anyone to suggest Bawumia as candidate was the problem,” he stated.

According to him, it was the NPP as a political party that contested the election, with Dr. Bawumia serving only as its leader.

“It is the NPP that contested, not Dr. Bawumia; he just led us. So the loss was for the party, not the candidate. The moment you take the candidate out of the party to blame then there is a misrepresentation,” he explained.

Antwi further reflected on what he described as the party’s electoral calculations ahead of the polls. He said prior to the election, there was a perception within the party that its traditional stronghold was largely Akan-Christian. By selecting a flagbearer from the North, he indicated that the NPP believed it would secure a significant share of votes in that region, particularly in areas where the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had been dominant.

“I have always analysed the party’s abysmal performance in the election where before the election, the thinking was that NPP thought the stronghold was the Akan-Christian and in choosing a flagbearer from the North, then we assumed that we were going to share the votes in the North with the NDC. But the results did not show that. We had only 9 seats out of 57,” he noted.

He described the outcome as an electoral performance issue, emphasizing that the anticipated vote gains in the North did not materialize as expected.

“It was electoral performance; our idea of getting votes from the north did not materialize but as a politician, I will never sit anywhere and single out a candidate,” Antwi added.