Political parties aren’t defeated. They surrender.
First, they forget who they are.
The NPP has always had camps. Kufuor. Akufo-Addo. Same house, different rooms. You could hear the shouting, but you still ate from the same kitchen.
Then came Alan versus Akufo-Addo. The kitchen split. Separate pots. Separate fires. It never ended – just got managed, postponed, spoken around.
Now look at the wreckage.
Akufo-Addo is in the past tense.
Alan is gone but his ghost hangs around.
Bawumia holds the center.
And Kennedy Agyapong? He didn’t inherit a faction. He inherited a holding cell for resentment – his own base, plus Alan’s diehards who refused exile. They didn’t follow Alan out. They stayed behind to nurse the grudge.
Watch what happens.
A scandal breaks under the ruling NDC. The opposition’s job is clear: attack. Press. Leverage. Gain advantage.
Bawumia’s camp does this.
Kennedy’s camp does the opposite. They don’t just stay quiet – they defend the government. They attack their own party members for attacking. They aren’t a faction. They’re the opposition’s opposition.
Alan’s holdouts are simpler still. They don’t attack the government. They only attack Bawumia. Their enemy isn’t the NDC. Their enemy is the man who beat their man.
This isn’t politics. It’s misalignment.
Factions compete for the party’s soul. Saboteurs want to burn the house down because they didn’t get the keys.
What you’re seeing in the NPP isn’t competition. It’s a political autoimmune disease. The body is attacking its own tissue, mistaking its organs for infection. This bloc isn’t a faction anymore. It’s a blockage.
You don’t need to whisper betrayal. Politics measures results, not intentions.
And the result is this: the ruling party is being defended by people wearing opposition colours.
In thirty days, they’ll choose a flagbearer.
Then will come the unity talks and tours. The handshakes. The staged photographs. The speeches about coming together.
It will all sound familiar. And it will all miss the point.
Unity doesn’t fail because people are unhappy. It fails because some no longer care if the party wins. The real question hanging over January 31 isn’t who emerges.
It’s who still wants the party to stand still and win 2028.
So forget unity. It’s already a casualty. The task isn’t to achieve it. The task is to win despite its absence.
Can you win a national election when a significant part of your own army is shooting at your generals?
January 31 is more than picking a candidate. It’s deciding what kind of party the NPP will be.
A party that attacks itself more than the government has already lost.
Here is the arithmetic we cannot avoid: You cannot defeat an opponent you are busy defending.
A saboteur’s goal isn’t to win your war. It’s to make sure you lose his.
The NPP has thirty days.
Not to find unity.
But to remember who it is – or to finalise its surrender to the enemy.
J. A. Sarbah
