Covid-19, Rawlings’ death affected NDC’s campaign in 2020 – Joshua Alabi

The Campaign Manager for the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Professor Joshua Alabi, attributed the party’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election to the COVID-19 pandemic and the death of the party’s founder, Jerry John Rawlings.

Prof. Alabi argued that while the pandemic caused a suspension of campaign activities, the government leveraged its COVID-19 interventions, such as free food, water, and electricity supplies, to campaign indirectly.

Speaking to Channel One News about his re-appointment as the Campaign Manager for the NDC’s flagbearer, John Mahama, Alabi expressed optimism about the 2024 elections.

He stated that the party has learned from its past mistakes and is prepared to work harder to secure victory.

“So what this means to me is that it has offered me the opportunity to make a critical analysis of what was last time and then see how best we can polish what gaps we had and fix that in the 2024 campaign. As you are aware, in 2020…we had a covid in this country.

“We were released to the campaign around somewhere in July. Yes, we had to set our machinery in place. Of course, setting all your machinery in place from July to December was quite a difficult task for us, but we had to do our best. Midway in our campaign again, we had a bad match, and that was the demise of our father, the founding father of the party, John Jerry Rawlings. So we had to truncate our campaign.”

Prof. Alabi outlined strategies such as door-to-door campaigning, constituency engagement, and messaging to position the flagbearer favourably before the electorate to secure victory.

He emphasised that the campaign would be issue-based and civil, focusing on projecting the candidate’s qualities and selling him to the people.

However, he cautioned against complacency, stressing that the party must work hard to protect its chances of winning.

“There is a belief out there that the NDC has won the election already, we don’t want to take that because if something belongs to you and you don’t protect it, the thief will take it so we have to work. So we are going to work with various constituencies, we are going to go out there, door to door like we did in 2008 which added up to our campaign and we are also going to look at our messages and the plan of work and I am confident that the with all this we’ll get the flagbearer [elected].”