Work to attract floating voters, youth - Analysts advise ARC
The leadership of the Alliance for Revolutionary Change (ARC) has been urged to work towards attracting floating voters who may be dissatisfied with the performance of the New Patriotic Party and the National Democratic Congress.
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They were also urged to come up with strategies that could help attract the youth and women in the country to enable them to make a positive impact in the coming December elections.
A Political Scientist, Dr Samuel Kofi Darkwa, and the Executive Director and Head of Polling Analysis of Global Info Analytics, Mussa K. Dankwah, made the call when the Daily Graphic sought their views on the launch of the ARC in Accra last Wednesday.
Trust
For Dr Darkwa, the Alliance must focus on winning the trust and support of the country's youth, women, and other potential voters by demonstrating its commitment to delivering real change and progress.
“As we look forward to the 2024 elections, it is evident that Alan and his alliance must do more to attract support from the youth, women, and other potential voters. They need to demonstrate a clear commitment to delivering genuine change and progress for the country and show their willingness to take bold steps towards achieving this,” he said.
Dr Darkwa added that, “More importantly, they should demonstrate how they are going to use the country’s natural and human resources to make Ghana self-reliant and achieve sustainable development”.
“In conclusion, it is essential for Alan and his team to prioritise effective communication and proactive planning to avoid missing out on vital opportunities,” he said.
Voters
Mr Dankwah, for his part, said the ARC should do more to attract voters instead of the leadership of small groups if it was to be formidable in the next election. “They have to attract support from NDC as well as floating voters in a significant way to cause a runoff in the election,” he said.
Mr Dankwah added that, “At the moment, it is Alan who appears to have the base and that base is being drawn from the NPP. They must be able to have people who will be able to appeal to NDC and floating voters to support the movement, until then, I can only see the movement denting any hope for NPP to be competitive in the 2024 elections,”.
Formidable
However, a Political Science Lecturer at the University of Education, Winneba, Gilbert Arhinful Aidoo, was of the view that such alliances in the history of the Fourth Republic had not made the desired impact on the electoral outcomes.
“While political divorces and formation of alliances or coalitions are common in the history of the Fourth Republic, the actual impact on electoral outcomes remain very negligible”, he said.
Mr Aiddo observed that “while emergence of any strong Third Force will be extremely healthy for our politics in the Fourth Republic, the merger we witnessed in the form of the ARC, I think will not really make much difference,”
“This has come rather too late: I wish they had begun this journey a little earlier. The groups that merged to form the ARC also do not carry much political clout (weight) so far as the Fourth Republican politics is concern.
“In fact, their best bet will be to send the election to a runoff and not to secure a victory,” he said.
ARC
The ARC is an amalgamation of political groups whose primary purpose is to topple the nation’s political duopoly and offer Ghanaians an alternative government. It is made up of the Movement for Change (M4C), the National Interest Movement (NIM), the Ghana Green Party (GGP), the Third Force Movement, the Non-Alliance Voters Association of Ghana (NAVAG), the Ghana First Coalition (GFC), the Union Movement (UM), the Crusaders Against Corruption Ghana National Party (GNP) among others.
The ARC has Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen as its leader with other key persons as Dr Michael Abu Sakara Foster and Akwasi Addai Odike.