The Campaign Manager for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) flagbearer, Professor Joshua Alabi, has attributed the party’s loss in the 2020 presidential election to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the passing of the party’s founder, Jerry John Rawlings.
According to Prof. Alabi, the pandemic disrupted campaign activities, while the government utilized its COVID-19 relief efforts, including free food, water, and electricity, for indirect campaigning.
In an interview with Channel One News following his re-appointment as Campaign Manager for John Mahama, the NDC’s 2024 flagbearer, Alabi expressed optimism. He acknowledged past mistakes and highlighted readiness to enhance campaign strategies for the upcoming election.
“So what this means to me is that it has offered me the opportunity to make a critical analysis of what was last time and then see how best we can polish what gaps we had and fix that in the 2024 campaign. As you are aware, in 2020…we had a covid in this country.
“We were released to the campaign around somewhere in July. Yes, we had to set our machinery in place. Of course, setting all your machinery in place from July to December was quite a difficult task for us, but we had to do our best. Midway in our campaign again, we had a bad match, and that was the demise of our father, the founding father of the party, John Jerry Rawlings. So we had to truncate our campaign.”
Prof. Alabi outlined strategies for the upcoming campaign, including door-to-door canvassing, engaging constituencies, and focusing on substantive issues to present the candidate positively to voters.
He stressed the importance of maintaining vigilance and avoiding complacency within the party ranks.
“There is a belief out there that the NDC has won the election already, we don’t want to take that because if something belongs to you and you don’t protect it, the thief will take it so we have to work. So we are going to work with various constituencies, we are going to go out there, door to door like we did in 2008 which added up to our campaign and we are also going to look at our messages and the plan of work and I am confident that the with all this we’ll get the flagbearer [elected].”