A political marketing expert, Professor Kobby Mensah has advised the leadership of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to brace up for internal conflicts which could result from heated campaigns by flagbearer aspirants of the party.

The General Secretary of the party, Justin Kodua has already cautioned aspirants about the use of vile language against one another in the race to be elected presidential candidate.

But the political marketing expert says although it is good to call for calm, some level of conflict is always anticipated during such an event and therefore the party should rather focus on devising conflict resolution mechanisms ahead of time.

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“Obviously, it is a good idea that the general secretary will call for calm but they must brace themselves for a very competitive, heated debate, obviously jabs here and there. Because this is a competition for the soul of the party and so any of these candidates really wants to go for the jugular. So I feel that the party should also prepare itself in terms of the leadership structure to prepare for conflict resolution. Because certainly, you do not expect that in a very heated debate, people would not go after each other. They’ll definitely go after each other. There’ll be cracks.”

“But of course, the most important thing to do is to have a framework that could be used to resolve those cracks when they happen. So certainly, they have to expect a very difficult outcome in terms of how people are going after each other. People will make sure that they say things that they would never in the ordinary say. So the party should put up a very effective conflict resolution plan so that after the event, they could actually resolve it amicably,” he said on JoyFM’s Midday.

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Aspirants are campaigning quite massively in a bid to become the flagbearer of the party in the 2024 election. Some have vehemently expressed their displeasure at the current NPP-led government in the wake of the national economic challenges.

An aspirant, Kwabena Agyepong, the latest to launch his campaign lamented that five other co-contestants have been part of the poor-performing administration and therefore, the party needs a “new face, a pair of clean hands, a leader to reconnect with our base and earn the trust of Ghanaians.”

Other aspirants are also boasting of their respective sacrifices for the party and why it is their time to lead the party.