Galamsey fight caused NPP many seats in parliament – Oppong Nkrumah

Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah believes the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) lost as many as 30 seats in parliament in the just ended 2020 general elections due to the tough decisions that were taken by the government in the past four years.

To him, the fight against galamsey, the banking sector clean up among other things lead to threats from organised groups to vote against the administration.

Speaking during the Minister’s Press Briefing on Thursday, December 10, 2020, Mr. Nkrumah said “We had organised groups that had been affected by some of the tough decisions that this administration has had to take, announcing boldly that they were going to organise coalitions to vote against this administration .

“I will give you a few examples, for persons involved in illegal or irresponsible small scale mining , those in the galamsey areas, they were quite clear that if the president attempted to fight galamsey they were going to ensure that they vote against him.

“Check particularly the parliamentary results in the galamsey areas and you will see that true to the threats that was advertised that if we fight galamsey we will fight you , you can extrapolate and see how that affected us in the galamsey areas.”

He added “Take the financial sector resolution and particularly those in assets management companies who boldly announced and called on their members, hundreds of thousands of them to vote against the administration to compel the election into a second round so that government will be forced to pay them 100 per cent .

“You recall government put out a payment programme , banks, non-banking financial institutions and asset managers , and their call was that we should pay all now else we will vote against you.

“If you are a government you have a choice. Do you break the bank because you want to win an election or do you maintain fiscal responsibility looking at all you numbers? The banks alone were about 4.5 million customers. So if you have such a strong cohorts saying that if you don’t pay all the money we will vote against you , you can begin to look at its potential impact on margins.

“Those who were involved in activities that government was not responsible for, said by force that government must pay them now and that if government didn’t pay they would vote against it . You can check those numbers.

“So, 10 million people voted in 2016 and with 900,000 victory margin and 13 million people voting in 2020 with 500,000 victory margin especially at a time when government has had to take some very tough decisions in the interest of the Republic and persons affected by it have warned that they will literally punish government for.

“So, we consider this to be a very good results at the end of the day in the presidential elections because we did not have to break the bank or succumb to some of these threats just because we wanted to win an election. We think that in the balance the people of Ghana have understood why government had to go through some of these decisions.”