Early Presidential Primary: The people are happy about the decision – NPP’s Ayinbisa

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has justified the top-bottom approach it has adopted for its internal elections and reorganization.

The party yesterday announced that its National Council had approved a proposal to adopt this new approach and that it has scheduled January 31, 2026 to hold a presidential primary to elect its flagbearer before holding executive elections.

This is a significant departure from the NPP’s bottom-up approach in internal reorganization. Usually, the party holds elections at the polling units, then constituencies before proceeding to conduct similar exercises at the regional and national levels.

The presidential and parliamentary primaries are normally the last phase of the reorganization and are, sometimes, conducted simultaneously.

Explaining why the party has decided to adopt a different approach this time, the Upper East Regional Communication Director of the party Peter Ayamga Ayinbisa said the decision is in line with the constitution of the party and will allow it enough time to mend cracks and heal before the general elections in 2028.

“It is important that we have an early conference where the presidential candidate will have ample time to deal with issues of his or her colleagues  at that level. Those who are hopeful now, those who will be contesting, they will have that ample  time to be able to deal with that, to be able to cement those problems. Sometimes you need to even go into the regions to be able to solve some other problems,” he stated.

He noted that the race for the flagbearership is usually characterized by acrimony and internal wrangling and may sometimes, deepen cracks within the party that will require ample time to mend in order to enhance the party’s chances.

Aside from these, Peter Ayinbisa believes the early election of a leader will give them enough room to market themselves and put the government on its toes.

“The candidate will need to market himself. So if you have more than two years to the general election, it means that you can go around the whole country, try to solicit your opinion, visit the chiefs, meet with key stakeholders of our party, and Ghanaians in general, to be able to market yourself. It helps the candidate to focus on national development.”

The new approach, he stated, was widely proposed when the party set out to assess the factors that occasioned its defeat in the last election and its approval, he said, has been welcome by many supporters.

“I think that the National Council took a decision that is in line with the constitution. And many of our people, our supporters across the world, are very happy about this decision.”