Presidential candidate Alan Kyerematen may have landed the third spot in the New Patriotic Party’s super delegate polls but his team remains unbothered by that result.
According to the spokesperson for the Alan Kyerematen campaign, Yaw Buaben Asamoa, their aim going into the Saturday conference was not to wrestle for first place but to secure a spot for the party’s primaries in November.
He explained, on JoyNews’ PM Express, that the super delegates conference was only meant for the “elite group” in the party to prune down the number of presidential aspirants.
This set of people, although part of the NPP, Mr. Asamoa believes do not represent the over 200,000 delegates expected to partake in the flagbearer election in November.
“Yes, they (super delegates) are leaders of the party, but of course, they don’t represent the political opinion in the party…0.004% of 200,000…961 persons representing 200,000 grassroots delegates? We don’t believe that they are representative of the mood and opinion down there.”
“He was supposed to be part of the five and that’s it. We’ve achieved that…We didn’t go in looking for a placement. We didn’t care as long as we were in the five,” Mr Asamoa said.
On Saturday, August 28, six NPP presidential aspirants successfully sailed through the party’s Super Delegates Conference.
The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia led with 68.15% (629) of the total votes cast, followed by Kennedy Agyapong who polled 15.03% (132) of the total votes cast.
Alan Kyerematen came in third with 10.29% (95) of the total votes cast, and Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto came in fourth with 3.90% (36).
Although the Super Delegates Conference was expected to help select five candidates, two candidates, Francis Addai Nimo and Boakye Kyeremateng Ayarko, tied for fifth place with nine votes each.
Meanwhile, the Alan Kyerematen campaign spokesperson remains confident that the result in November will be completely different dismissing claims that the party’s history proves otherwise.
“History is not repetitive. So, the history of Nana Addo and Alan Kyerematen is a contest of two very strong personalities fighting for the favour of this party and this party determining that Mr Kyerematen must wait his turn for Nana Addo to have a crack at the presidency.”
As a result, the party rallied behind now President Akufo-Addo garnering more support from him in the lead to the flagbearer selection, Mr Asamoa said, adding pressure was placed on Mr Kyerematen to not run at all.
“So that line is not because he, Kyerematen, declined in popularity, it was because the party was determined to consolidate support behind Nana Addo unequivocally so that the party could take Nanadu into the presidency, which we succeeded in doing,” he noted.
Mr Asamoa noted that the Alan Kyermaten camp is happy to continue their work and campaign in the lead-up to the national conference adding the super delegates conference “was a useful exercise for us.”
