A contest that was initially planned to come off on December 7, 2018 had to be postponed twice. The party held that due to its Delegates Conference in November and the subsequent elections of new executives, the incoming administration will need some time to set the modalities for the primaries, hence the first postponement.
The pegging of the nomination and filing fee for the aspirants at a whopping GHS 420,000 resulted in another deferment of the polls as all the aspirants bar John Mahama protested against the fee.
February 23rd was finally settled on and unsurprisingly, John Mahama was overwhelmingly endorsed by the delegates.
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He polled 213, 487 representing 95.23 percent of the total votes cast to topple the six other contestants. A former vice chancellor of UPSA, Prof. Joshua Alabi, came in a distant second with 3,404 votes representing 1.52% of total votes cast and was followed by second deputy speaker of Parliament Alban Bagbin who had 2,301 votes representing 1.03% of the total votes.
Goosie Tanoh obtained 2,091 votes (0.93%), Sylvester Mensah, formerly with the NHIA polled a paltry 934 (0.42%) votes with former Trade Minister Ekow Spio-Garbrah garnering 1,447 votes representing 0.65%.
Nurudeen Iddrisu came last with 520 votes representing 0.23% of the total votes cast.
Albeit the disappointing performance of Dr. Ekow Spio-Garbrah, the results were widely anticipated by most political pundits.
By this victory, former President John Mahama gets to lead the NDC into a third consecutive election.
However, the bigger question for the NDC faithful and the John Mahama campaign team is, what next?
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Though the majority of the contestants have conceded defeat and called Mahama to congratulate him, the flagbearer campaign was far from clean.
Some of the contestants maligned the former president from the playbook the NPP used during the 2016 general elections.
There were repeated calls by some of the contestants (particularly Alban Bagbin) for the NDC to discard Mahama because he has failed. Some even went to the extreme to label him incompetent, a tag that was constantly used by the NPP to berate his person and his administration.
But for the NDC to have any strong chance of returning to the Jubilee House in 2021, there has to be unity in its rank and file.
Will John Mahama be able to discard all that was said about him during the primaries by some of his opponents and bring everyone on board heading into 2020?
Having lost the 2016 general elections to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of over one million votes, the biggest challenge the NDC and John Mahama will face is how to convince Ghanaians to vote him back.
Some political connoisseurs think this will be a mountain that will be too high for the NDC in the upcoming elections. This, they think, is due to the fact that, though the new government has some challenges in addressing all the numerous promises they made to Ghanaians, they have been able to attain a portion of those promises especially the much-touted free senior high school education.
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Another issue that will confront the Mahama campaign going into 2020 will be the issue of message. In 2016, it was mainly about infrastructural development vis-à-vis job creation.
Having lost heavily on this theme the last time, it remains to be seen of what the message and strategy for 2020 will be.
The delegates of the NDC have spoken loud and clear, and it’s evident that they have confidence in John Mahama.
However, to be president again, Mahama’s campaign has to transcend the NDC’s base and capture more floating voters.
Will John Mahama be able to do that? Will John Mahama be able to erase the one million vote deficit he suffered in 2016? 2020 can’t come fast enough.