2020 polls: Akufo-Addo’s 500,000 victory margin 2nd highest ever for any president seeking 2nd term in 4th Republic – Buaben Asamoa

The 500,000 victory margin by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in the 202o presidential and Parliamentary elections is the second highest ever for any President seeking second term in office in in the 8 elections Ghana has had in the 4th Republic, Director of Communications, Yaw Buaben Asamoa, has said.

He told Johnnie Hughes on the New Day show that so the president did very well with the performance.

In the 2016 general elections, Mr Akufo-Addo won with close to a million votes to become the President of Ghana. However, four years later in the 2020 elections, that figure dropped to a little over 500,000.

Yaw Buaben Asamoa who is a former Member of Parliament for Adentan attributed the drop in the figure to incumbency disadvantage.

Asked why the NPP lost overwhelming Majority in Parliament with 169 seats to now hold 137 seats after the 2020 polls, he explained that “The party as it always does after every election set up a committee to inquire into the causes, when we win or lose. This time it was led by the Honourable Osafo Maafo.

“They have come up with the various reasons why but clearly it looks like it is region and constituency specific because the president did very well even though he drops votes, his 500,000 margin was still the second highest ever in the 8 elections we have had in the Republic so the president did very well.

“Incumbency has the tendency to whip you a little harder than you would expect because when you are an incumbent, just like we are now, you have to grapple with or confront the problems of the day, problems that sometimes you don’t even anticipate and most of those problems demand immediate solutions.

“So incumbency tends to, kind of drain good will a bit, but at the end of the day the resilience of the substantive policies still counts.”

He added “Having expected the qualities of our policies, I believe they were policies that impacted on Ghanaians. we had to deal with the fundamental issues affecting the lifestyle of Ghanaians and then having successfully exited the IMF. During that time in spite of the conditionality we had started implementing our flagship programmes and those programmes were programmes that impact on our key issues , social vulnerabilities, employment , income , access to education health, as well as infrastructure, roads, energy sector, and then we had that kind of results , I was included myself, I lost my seat , it was kind of surprising.”