The Majority Leader in Parliament, Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, has stated that the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) took the best decision by electing the Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia to lead the party and subsequently the country at such a time.

The Suame legislator believes the current state of the country requires someone like Dr Bawumia to offer the right leadership that will reposition the country for further progress and transformation.

The main opposition party has repeatedly singled out the Vice President and criticized him for the struggles of the Ghanaian economy on the basis that he touted himself as an economic messiah while in opposition, and threw a lot of jibes at the NDC and its leader.

According to the NDC, the rising public debt caused by excessive borrowing, the struggles of the Ghanaian cedi against major international currencies, high inflation among others, have exposed the Vice President as inept, considering that he spoke harshly against lesser versions of these problems back in opposition.

The Vice President has also not been spared for the failures of the NPP government particularly because of his role as the head of the government’s economic management team.

But speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express on Tuesday, November 14, Kyei Mensah-Bonsu said the NPP has literally killed three birds with one stone with Dr Bawumia’s election.

“I think we’ve killed three birds with one stone. People say that the party is an Akan party including the former President [John Mahama] who was lamenting the fact that Bawumia was wasting his time with us and was pleading through his chiefs that he [Bawumia] joins his party. Now, that thing is gone.”

The fact that as a country we have not also ever elected a Muslim to be our presidential candidate, it opens up possibilities, and I think that’s very good on the part of not only the NPP but as a country because the constitution provides that there should not be any discrimination in electing people into public office. On the discrimination strands they mention regional balance, gender balance, ethnic balance and religious balance. In the directive principles of state policy, all these things are mentioned” he noted.

Nonetheless, the experienced legislator stated that Dr Bawumia was not elected based on ethnic, religious or geographical considerations.

But, let’s not overly dwell on that because Bawumia has not been elected because he’s a Muslim or a northerner. He’s been elected because at this time in the nation’s development, some of us believe that the critical thing to look at is who has the knowledge, competence, vision and experience to help us reposition the economy; someone who’s strong in financial management. It wasn’t as if none of them qualified to be the leader, but in terms of who had greater competence to handle the economy, we felt that it was Dr Bawumia, and that is why the overwhelming majority elected him to be the candidate."

On the running mate position, the Suame MP, who had rooted for a northerner to be the flagbearer, said the running mate must be from the south, but was not specific as to which region that person should come from, although the suggestions so far have largely favoured the Ashanti Region, the NPP’s stronghold.

In a recent interview on JoyNews, a former General Secretary of the NPP, Kwabena Agyei Agyapong, also downplayed attempts by political opponents to blame the woes of the incumbent NPP administration largely on the Vice President and now flagbearer, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.

In the view of Mr Agyapong, unlike the National Democratic Congress’ flagbearer, John Dramani Mahama who has been President before, the same cannot be said of Dr Bawumia because the buck does not stop with him as the Vice President.

He thus suggested that comparing him to the NDC’s John Mahama who has been both a Vice President and a President would not be fair.