Flagbearer hopeful of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Kwabena Agyei Agyapong says he was disappointed that president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo did not make significant changes to his government after the 2020 Elections.
According to Mr. Agyapong, the outcome of the 2020 polls which saw the NPP lose its dominance in Parliament and almost half of the popular votes it won in the 2016 presidential elections was a clear signal that Ghanaians were not impressed with the president’s handling of the country’s affairs.
He, therefore, expected the president to seize the opportunity and shakeup his government in his second term of office .
But president Akufo-Addo, he said, missed the opportunity when he failed to make any significant change after his re-election.
“After the election of 2020, when we won, there was an opportunity I thought he should have grabbed with what the Ghanaian people were telling us. Look the difference between 2016 and 2020; a victory of 63 seats majority disappearing and then a popular vote of a million being halfed,” he stated in an interview on JoyNews.
“It means they were not entirely happy with what had transpired. Normally, he should have imbibed that and make some major changes but he hasn’t done that. I was not happy with that and I have expressed that. But that is his choice”.
The NPP and president Akufo-Addo came into office following a resounding victory in the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections.
While Nana Addo garnered almost a million more votes than his main contender, John Dramani Mahama, who was then the incumbent president, his party dwarfed Mr. Mahama’s NDC in Parliament with 169 seats to 106.
In the subsequent election, however, the governing party lost 37 of its seats, bringing the number of seats it holds in the August House to 137 same as the number the opposition party occupies.
The president also won by a little over 500,000 votes difference from the almost 1 million margin.
Following the elections, President Akufo-Addo reduced the size of what many described as an elephant sized government, from 120 ministers to 85.
However, some are not satisfied with the reduction and have been calling on the president to cut the number further down.
