The Majority Leader in Parliament, Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu has said the governing New Patriotic Party could have won 17 extra parliamentary seats but for the internal wrangling that rocked the party prior to the December 2016 general elections.
He lamented that the wrangling prevented more of their members from campaigning for the party.
“Any serious reflection will reveal that when the army of the NPP lifted high the flag of the elephant to go into combat a few among us decided not to be part of the battle. Not only did they only participate, they tried to dissuade others not to join because as they said, because Nana Addo was leading us, the party could not win. The party won a resounding victory with Nana Addo leading us. Without that group of party members. NPP currently holds 169 majority seats in Parliament while the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has 106 seats. Despite the huge margin, Mensah Bonsu said the NPP could have reduced the NDC’s seat to less than 90.
“…We won but with all hands on deck I believe we could have inflicted a much more pulverizing defeat on the NDC by perhaps reducing their numbers to less than 100 or even less than 90 seats in Parliament. The election results bare testimony to that. There are about 17 seats we could have won nationwide if we could have worked slightly harder. We did not win these seats because among other things of our own internal conflicts…Without those internal conflicts we could have done yet better than we did,” he added.
The party in previous years battled with internal wrangling that led to the suspension of its National Chairman, General Secretary and Second Vice Chair, Paul Afoko, Kwabena Agyepong and Sammy Crabbe respectively.
Some disgruntled parliamentary aspirants also run in the December election as independent candidates thus weakening to an extent the NPP’s strength in some areas.
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