It is now official, following the personal confirmation by Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen that he was going to contest the 2024 presidential election as an independent candidate.
Alan officially submitted his resignation letter indicating he was no longer interested in being a member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) on Monday [September 25, 2023].
Immediately after that, he addressed a press conference and announced his decision to contest 2024 as an independent candidate.
He is now forming a movement, called “Movement for Change” with a Monarch Butterfly as the symbol.
This is a big blow to the governing New Patriotic Party as the move would greatly affect the unity of the party going into Election 2024.
The NPP has been at the helm of affairs in governance since January 7, 2017, and hoping to break the eight-year cycle of change of government which usually alternates between the NPP and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).
The speculations about Alan Kyerematen’s resignation and independent presidential ambition intensified over the weekend and got NPP members jittery after a poster announcing his planned press conference at the Movenpick Hotel on Monday afternoon was released by his aides and supporters.
In fact, the speculations had actually started earlier, before September 5, 2023, the day he announced his withdrawal from the current NPP presidential race.
Alan was shortlisted as part of the top five candidates who were going into the final selection on November 4, 2023, but some people believed that he would have lost the November 4 election, considering the popularity gained by Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia and Kennedy Ohene Agyapong as the leading candidates in the Special Super Delegates conference.
Alan placed third in the August 2023 Special Delegates conference having garnered less than 100 votes out of the over 900 votes.
Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, considered by some as a “non-presidential” material who entered the NPP presidential race just recently beat Alan, who had been in the race for more than 16 years.
Alan’s name first came up in 2005 as the replacement for the then President John Agyekum Kufuor who was retiring on January 6, 2009, as the leader of the NPP.
In 2007, Alan contested with 16 other candidates and came second, as Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo [now President of Ghana] beat him and became the leading candidate. Akufo-Addo has led the party since 2007 as the first presidential choice and has subsequently beaten Alan Kyerematen in other NPP presidential primaries.
President Akufo-Addo is retiring on January 6, 2025, hence the NPP is looking for a replacement.
President Akufo-Addo’s vice, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has shot up as the next preferable choice, with many party members throwing their support behind him. He garnered a convincing endorsement of over 50 percent votes at the special delegates conference held in August 2023.
The larger Electoral College of the NPP will on November 4, 2023, select the next leader.
However, Alan Kyerematen expressed his unhappiness with the process that led to Dr. Bawumia’s convincing victory in the Super Delegates Conference.
Some of Alan’s aides alleged that the presidency was supporting Dr. Bawumia behind the scenes and also influencing delegates clandestinely.
To Alan, his spokespersons and supporters, it was Alan’s time to lead the NPP, having waited for over 16 years for his turn and that it is not time yet for Dr. Bawumia whom they claim only joined the race recently. They wanted Alan to lead after which Dr. Bawumia could have also taken the baton.
Supporters of Bawumia however think otherwise, and argue that since it was a contest, they should allow the delegates to decide who leads the party.
Will this be the second time Alan is quitting NPP?
Feeling bitter about the loss in the 2007 presidential primary and what he described subsequently as being sidelined, Alan, in 2008 resigned from the NPP in a similar move but was politically coerced and later rejoined the party.
On September 5, 2023, Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen withdrew from the NPP presidential race.
He announced his decision in a press statement.
Mr Kyerematen wrote, “The question I keep asking myself is, How did we get here as a Party in the first place, and how far are we prepared to tread on this dangerous path to self-destruction?”
“Regrettably, I am not convinced that the circumstances I have referred to earlier, will not persist or even be escalated in the next round of elections, for which balloting is scheduled for Wednesday, 6th of September 2023.
What happened in 2008 with Alan Kyerematen’s resignation from NPP?
Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen on April 17, 2008, resigned from the NPP.
There have been varying views about the political future of Mr. Kyerematen following his withdrawal from the NPP presidential primary.
In what looked like a re-enactment of a 2008 scenario when he quit the party after a failed ambition to lead the party into the presidential race, Mr Kyerematen stepped down from the final stage of the party’s presidential primary, citing intimidation, physical assault on his supporters, and an unlevel field that favoured a particular candidate.
Known for his calm disposition, the former Minister of Trade and Industry’s appeal among political moderates, has been touted as a direct function of his unpolitical character.
The businessman, who attains 68 years on October 3, 2023, had sought the party’s blessings to contest the presidency 15 years ago, and was always touted as the party’s anointed candidate after Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo until Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia emerged.
We reproduce below an article published by the Daily Graphic on Friday, August 18, 2008, when Alan left the NPP and assigned reasons for his resignation from the party.
Alan quits NPP
Story by Kobby Asmah and Donald Ato Dapatem. First published on Friday, August 18, 2008.
Mr Alan Kyerematen, the defeated presidential aspirant of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has resigned from the party.
According to the Political Aide to Mr Kyerematen, Mr John Kumah, Mr Kyerematen would make his reasons known to Ghanaians later.
At the time of filing this report, no official reason had been given but snippets of information indicated that Mr Kyerematen’s supporters had not been happy with the treatment meted out to them by the campaign team of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the flag bearer of the party.
However, another source close to Mr Kyerematen told the Daily Graphic that Mr Kyerematen presented his resignation letter to the party secretariat yesterday afternoon, copied to President John Agyekum Kufuor.
At the party office, the National Chairman, Mr Peter Mac Manu, was absent, having travelled outside the country, according to party insiders.
The source also told the Daily Graphic that Mr Kyerematen’s resignation was as a result of the alleged harassment of some of his supporters who wanted to contest NPP parliamentary primaries.
Since he was named the Chairman of the Committee in charge of Identifiable Groups of the Akufo-Addo Campaign Team, Mr Kyerematen is said to have never attended any of its meetings.
Reports also indicate that Mr Kyerematen wants to run as an independent candidate in the December general election.
Mr Kyerematen, a former Trade and Industry Minister, contested the position of flag bearer of the NPP in December 2007 but lost to Nana Akufo-Addo when he polled 736 votes against the 1,060 obtained by the winner.
He has had an extensive and successful professional career in the private and public sectors spanning over a period of 24 years.
He was a senior corporate executive with a subsidiary of Unilever International in Ghana.
He also worked for a number of years as a Principal Consultant and Head of Public Systems Management with one of the leading management development institutions in Ghana, the Management Development and Productivity Institute (MDPI).
He was responsible for establishing the EMPRETEC Programme in Ghana (an enterprise development programme sponsored by the UNDP and Barclays Bank Ghana Ltd in 1990.
As Chief Executive, he led in the transformation of EMPRETEC from a small UNDP project into an independent foundation which is internationally recognised as a best practice model for private sector development.
In 1998, Mr Kyerematen was appointed by the UNDP as the Regional Director to establish and manage the Enterprise
Africa Regional Programme, an Africa-wide regional programme for the development and promotion of SMEs, which is the UNDP’s flagship programme for private sector development in Africa.
Under the umbrella of the Enterprise Africa Programme, Mr Kyerematen successfully expanded the EMPRETEC presence in Africa into 11 other countries, besides Ghana and Zimbabwe.
The new countries included Botswana, Ethiopia, Namibia, Nigeria, Mauritius, Mozambique, South Africa, Cameron, Senegal, Uganda and Swaziland.
He is a graduate in Economics from the University of Ghana and also holds a law degree from the same university. He has been called to the Ghana Bar and is a practising attorney-at-law in Ghana.
In addition, he is a Hubert Humphrey Fellow of the School of Management at the University of Min-nesota, U.S.A., having completed one year management studies under the Fulbright Scholarship pro-gramme in that institution.
Mr Kyrematen is a member of the Council of Governors of the British Executive Service Overseas (BESO) in the UK and also a board member of other organisations in Ghana.
In 1994, he was listed by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 Global Leaders for the new millennium, alongside Bill Gates (Microsoft Corporation), John F. Kennedy Jr and others.
