Dr. Kwabena Duffour’s entry into the NDC presidential primary was heralded by an announcement from an unusual source— Gabby Otchere Darko (GOD), the much-feared cousin of the sitting President. Dr. Kwabena Duffour, a former Finance Minister and Governor of the Bank of Ghana is lacing his boots to face John Mahama in the coming NDC primary. Gabby posted on one of his social media handles in 2021.
Why will anyone try to pry into activities of an opposing party or an enemy camp? The uninitiated may be asking with shock. It’s part of the marauding Machiavellian tactic where every cunningness, scheming and maneuvers are initiated to get to the nerve centre of an opposing party. Gabby’s tweets were thrusted on the fact that John Mahama is getting a worthy candidate than all the rest, who in the past paraded as mere political masquerades. The breaking news set the tone for conjectural analyses.
The conspiracy became so intense that why many NDC folks were worried about the real intentions of Dr. Duffour, the NPPists were left to enjoy the melodrama from the sidelines. From the stable of the NPP, a Duffour candidature looks more compromising than that of Mahama. Aside, he could be an easy crack for anyone of the NPP candidates who have declared an intention to contest the NPP presidential primary. Then perhaps, the real issue of Duffuor’s banking matters with the State.
Is he running under an instruction from the powers that be? So, he can free himself of all of the accusations been levelled against him in the running of his business empires? These are the other concerns bugging the minds of many NDC faithful who believe Dr. Duffour’s run is an orchestrated agenda than genuinely believing in his chances of beating John Mahama in the NDC presidential race. Although he may not win, the obvious permutations from the Gabbys of our political space, is that he will ruffle John Mahama and his team to the degree that the NPP can easily capitalize on before and during the 2024 elections.
Duffour’s candidature became more viable and visible when his assembled team members became public. Majority of Team Duffour are known and sworn “political enemies” of the former president and will do everything within their power to curtail a Mahama ascension to the highest office of the land once again. They include Yaw Boateng Gyan, a former National Organiser of the NDC; Fritz Baffour, a former MP and a minister of state; Rojo Mettle Nunoo, the party’s well-known face at the strong room of the Electoral Commission among others.
Beyond those who constitute the front-line backers of the Kwabena Duffour candidacy, there are other top and leading members of the NDC who are supporting Dr. Kwabena Duffour on the quiet. The parade includes Dan Abodapki, Dr. Obed Yao Asamoah, and others of the NDC’s Council of Elders group who are supposed to be non-partisan but showed their bias for the former Finance Minister. But for the Duffour candidacy, their Mahama nomination would have been like an NDC adopted project.
The pro-Mahama group members were also observing the Duffour agenda from a distance and thus decided to follow every and any step of the Duffour group; to the extent that a very product like the Kwabena Duffour Ahotor project was vehemently opposed to by the Mahama people. Not that it isn’t a good project; but the fact that the product has the potential of stoking up the presidential ambition of the Kumawu-born politician, Kwabena Duffour, it should not get a starter at all.
The party’s leadership, led by Aseidu Nketia frustrated Dr. Duffour from using the project to facilitate his political or presidential run, until the NDC presidential primary is held, and a winner declared. All along, outsiders like the NPP who watched the NDC permutations on the sidelines put up commentaries that suggested that for once, John Mahama’s candidacy was getting ruffled by a tougher candidate than the meek challenges put up by the Goosies and Prof Alabis in the 2019 presidential nomination of the NDC.
A head security personnel of the Duffuor 2024 presidential campaign has openly suggested that Dr Duffour was all ready to meet Mahama boot-for-boot and to borrow Mahama’s own words, “to meet the former President in his own zonal marking tactics for the 2024 presidential nominations of the NDC.” The latest attempt to stall the NDC’s presidential and parliamentary elections seemed to be giving credence that there are some outside sources and forces manipulating Dr. Duffour to disrupt the NDC primary on May 13th, 2023.
What about the issues being raised by the Duffour camp that Mr. Mahama and the leadership of the party have connived to rig the presidential primary election in favour of the latter? Can this be true? The court will decide that later. In the meantime, it feeds into the narrative that Dr. Duffour is an agent-provocateur being remotely controlled to cut off Mahama’s dominance in the NDC. Or so, it seems?
From the NPP standpoint, they will be “politically good” having Dr. Duffour as the NDC candidate for the 2024 elections, not only because the former Finance Minister presents an easier riddle to crack, but also in an unlikely event Dr. Duffour won the presidency, the NDC is not likely to harass officials of the establishment as it may portend for them, under a Mahama second-term presidency.
