The last time the New Patriotic Party (NPP) beat their rivals the National Democratic Congress (NDC) at anything really substantial was in December 2004 at the presidential and parliamentary elections. Since then, it has been one defeat after another. Not even at their very own favourite pastime of litigation could they beat the NDC at the 2012 election petition hearings.
But the NPP has now changed its game and is giving the NDC a run for its money. ‘Right now, our main focus is to steal the limelight from the NDC,’ Mr Kwabena Agyepong told reporters, ‘and what better way to do this than by creating a mighty storm of internal conflicts within the party?’
Mr Agyepong continued: ‘We have noticed with alarm and dismay that the energy crisis is giving an incumbency advantage to the NDC. If we don’t take urgent steps, people will be so consumed with this Dumsor that come 2016, they can think of nothing but Dumsor, NDC, and Mahama.’
Mr Agyepong said that this situation was unacceptable. He told reporters that the decision of the NPP to court media attention by engaging in internal disputes was taken very early in the year, but implementation had to be delayed because of other unrelated instances of infighting. Mr Agyepong said that he is very happy that the plan seems to be finally working well.
‘A lot of thinking went into this,’ another high-ranking member of the party told reporters on condition of anonymity, ‘we had to hire professional Mismanagement Consultants, Agent Provocateurs, Mavericks wielding Firebrands and Powder-kegs.’ After a short pause, he added, ‘We even hired mercenaries.’ He assured the media that the party now has all it takes for an explosive drama of political in-fighting.
‘But capturing the media centre-stage is only the beginning,’ Mr Agyepong said, ‘our ultimate aim is to win the 2016 presidential election.’ He admitted that at the moment, they have no clue how to make that happen. He was nevertheless quite optimistic:
‘Trust me when I say that we’ll soon figure that out. But right now, there is one and only one aim before us. And that is to fight and fight and fight among us and with ourselves until all the newspapers in the country are full of nothing but our internal squabbles. Thank you all very much. This is the end of my press conference!’
Editor’s note: The ‘Inside the News by Mpakoo’ column which appears every Monday exclusively on ghanabusinessnews.com is satire.