NDC downplays EIU's report on 2020 elections
The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has downplayed the predictions by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) that they will lose the 2020 polls to the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).
The EIU Report released on May 13, 2019 said President Akufo-Addo would beat the NDC candidate, former President John Mahama, in next year’s polls.
Advertisement
In a telephone interview yesterday, the Communications Director of the NDC, Mr Kakra Essamuah, said even though the party was yet to officially react to the report, he described the prediction as not based on credible grounds.
In his view, predicting who would win an election 18 months into that election was not scientific.
Recently, he said Macron won an election in France “but today what is happening in France? so we are not going to worry ourselves about such reports at all”.
Furthermore, Mr Essamuah said with the Internet world it would be very dangerous for the EIU to make such predictions, adding that “we don’t do politics on predictions and perceptions”.
He said the top of the NDC agenda would be the quality of the campaign to wrest political power from the NPP.
“They (EIU) want us to get complacent but we will not. Where is it from? We will go into the election well prepared to win,” he stated.
EIU Report
The EIU report stressed: “Nana Akufo-Addo, the President, and his NPP will see the country’s economic situation generally improve during the remainder of their terms of office. In the presidential election, it stated that President Akufo-Addo will face a challenge from John Mahama— Ghana’s President from 2012 to early 2017, who was elected leader of the opposition NDC in February 2019,” the latest report released on May 13 said.
It added: “The 2016 legislative election was won by the NPP; and the campaign was dominated by the faltering economy, which many Ghanaians still associate with Mr Mahama.”
“The Economist Intelligence Unit believes that it will be difficult for the NDC under Mr Mahama to portray itself as the better custodian of Ghana’s economy, especially as the country’s growth outlook is fairly strong.”
The report was emphatic “Mr Akufo-Addo and the NPP to secure re-election in 2020.”
It however observed “if the NDC can present a coherent opposition and hold the NPP to account on unfulfilled campaign promises particularly on job creation and industrialisation, where progress has been generally slow and success patchy, the election could be closely contested.”