As the public watches in horror while a turf war in the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) over who will succeed President Akufo-Addo as party leader in 2024 twists into an ethnocentric Game of Thrones, Majority Leader, Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu has become the first victim of the building implosion.
Former Energy Minister, Boakye Agyarko’s denouncement of Kyei Mensah Bonsu as a “bloody fool,” potentially harms the Majority Leader’s speculated chances as the one President Akufo Addo may be selecting to deputise a presidential candidate that he may eventually select as his successor.
Already, many in the Ashanti base of the party have been agreeing with Boakye Agyarko’s point of view, for being an Ashanti and yet abandoning the cause of the Ashantis in support of the Presidential ambition of Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia who is reportedly being groomed by President Akufo Addo as his replacement.
The rippling effects of the fallout include vows that in the next elections Kyei Mensah Bonsu will not be tolerated as the Parliamentary Candidate of Suame, in the Ashanti Region, which the man has represented for many political cycles and built his political career on.
And as the prospects that Bawumia is going to end up like former Vice President Aliu Mahama become hauntingly clear, the implication for Kyei Mensah Bonsu is that his ambition to be Bawumia’s running mate in 2024 may likely remain a pipedream.
WhatsUp News has been picking up information that campaigners including Mensah-Bonsu asking for the NPP to elect a non-Akan Bawumia for 2024, had also been proposing that Bawumia partners with an Ashanti – Ashanti Region being the backbone of the NPP.
Apparently, this was what encouraged Kyei Mensah-Bonsu to come out and add his voice to the point of view that the time has come for the NPP, an Akan-centric, party to deodorize its ethnocentric image.
Boakye Agyarko is technically a Krobo, even though his roots is from Ashanti. This was the same Boakye Agyarko that Akufo-Addo used as fall guy to cover his scandal over the Ameri re-negotiated deal.
It would be recalled that Boakye Agyarko was Energy Minister for Akufo-Addo when the government decided to renegotiate the Ameri deal. The move to vary the Build Own Operate and Transfer contract with Ameri by contracting another company proved a scandalous disaster.
President Akufo-Addo, in the wake of the mess, resorted to plausible deniability, saying he was misled.
The President accepted that yes, he had signed the new deal, but that he had been misled by Boakye Agyarko into signing it.
After that, Agyarko had no choice but to look like the agent of corruption and resign as Energy Minister. He had vowed to come out and explain his side of the story later but never did.
As things stand now, Agyarko’s prospect of ever being a part of any NPP government does not lie with the Akufo-Addo government, but elsewhere; probably in a future Alan Kyeremanten government.
Therefore when Kyei Mensah Bonsu aired his opinion that the NPP must shirk its Akan-centric image, and it was clear that his argument naturally favoured Bawumia, who is Akufo-Addo’s Vice President, Agyarko went on the offensive to call him a “bloody fool!”
Meanwhile, a stalwart of the ruling party, Dr. Nyaho Nyaho Tamakloe, has joined in the scornful response to Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu’s call for the NPP to shirk its Akan-centric image.
Dr. Tamakloe, known for his controversial opinions, said the Majority leader’s opinion smacks of double standards and is coming from a man who himself is undemocratic.
“Kyei Mensah Bonsu as I said earlier, refused to be contested in his own constituency when he was Majority leader, so, that tells you that the man himself is an undemocratic person,” Dr. Nyaho Nyaho Tamakloe said.
He points out that, “Nowhere in the (NPP) Constitution has it been stated that when one particular ethnic group or people from the same ethnic group have been at the helm of the party, then the party should look for somebody from a different ethnic group.”