Renowned economist, Kwame Pianim, says any of the 10 presidential hopefuls of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) will perform better as a president of Ghana than anyone from the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).
He believes the aspirants are all poised to sacrifice to lead the party and have the potential to change the fortunes of the country if elected to lead the party.
He advised the aspirants not to bad mouth each other just to score cheap political points.
In an interview on Citi FM, Mr Pianim said: “We encourage all of them to sell themselves, and not to talk about other people. The party is not for personal aggrandizement of one person. Any of the NPP candidates, as far as we [elders] are concerned, will perform better in terms of our philosophy and our outlook of life than anybody from the other side [NDC]”.
He entreated his peers not to take sides emphasizing the need for the elders to support all the 10 candidates to avoid further exacerbation of internal wrangling.
Kwame Pianim who attended the campaign launch of one of the aspirants, Kwabena Agyei Agyepong assured to attend the campaign launch of the others describing all of them as his children.
“I hope the founding members of the party and all the elders will support all the 10 people who are offering themselves as flagbearers. I was there to encourage Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, just like I’m encouraging all the others to come out and sacrifice to lead the nation. It’s not easy to be a flagbearer, these young people will go round the country and spread the message. They are the ones who are going to energise the people at the party base. Hopefully to give them confidence not to lose hope in the political system. It’s the only thing we have, to go and fight and preserve the democratic dispensation, free press, civil liberties that we want at a hard cost to a lot of people.”
He added, “Yes I was there to support Kwabena Agyepong just like I support all the other 9. It’s not for me to select the flagbearer or the 900 super delegates who are supposed to turn the number down to 5, in case they are more than 5, so that the 22,000 delegates from the polling stations, the grassroots members, they will make the appropriate thing to select one. But I hope that when they select one, all the others will rally behind him.
“It’s good that the party elders don’t take part in supporting one or two, but support all of them so that the task of uniting the party to face the other party [NDC] during the 2024 general elections will be easier. I will attend the campaign launch of the others if invited.”
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