Ghana’s former High Commissioner to South Africa, Ambassador Lee Ocran, has opened up on some of the harrowing reasons that might have perforated and ruptured the National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) chances of winning the 2016 general elections.
As one of those in charge of preparing the NDC’s 2016 manifesto, Ambassador Lee Ocran reveals that prior to the elections, he was “cocksure” the his party would be retained, until figures trickling in showed the New Patriotic Party polling astronomical figures in both the presidential and parliamentary elections.
Speaking on Radio Gold, the NDC stalwart noted that for the party to have lost the 2016 elections by those huge margins, clearly shows the NDC engaged in acts that the electorate frowned on.
“We were sure we were going to win but the results show we were doing things the people didn’t like. We thought we were doing the best, but if the results were genuine, they didn’t like what we were doing”, he said.
To him, the NDC did a good job in explaining its policies to the electorates, thus was surprised to find out the ineffectiveness of most of their campaign messages, and conjectured whether Ghanaians conceded that indeed they were incompetent or corrupt.
“We are trying to find out by going out to know from the people- not only NDC members about what went wrong. Maybe the people took in the promises of the opposition. Maybe they believed we were stealing their money or we were incompetent”, he stated.
Ambassador Lee Ocran however admitted that the NDC erred grievously in scrapping allowances meant for nurses. This decision, he explained, was a bad move that contributed significantly to their defeat.
“Some decisions we took were not right – scrapping of nurses allowances was not right- I think because they (trainee nurses) have no chance of applying for student loans, their allowances shouldn’t have been scrapped. It was not proper”, he lamented.
To admit more students in the various nursing training colleges, the former NDC administration stripped the trainees off such benefit.
The former administration had complained that the huge amount it paid as allowances to the trainees prevented it from admitting more students.
But the decision was met with much resistance from the students who rely on the allowances to support themselves in school.
However following recommendations from a committee the previous administration set up to investigate the matter government, they subsequently restored the allowance following the recommendations they received.
Despite the late modification, Ambassador Lee Ocran insists it did little to enhance their chances of winning the elections.
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