The NPP’s Early-Campaign Ban: Discipline Today, Victory Tomorrow

The New Patriotic Party’s directive halting early parliamentary campaigning is not merely a procedural housekeeping measure. It is a decisive assertion of institutional authority at a moment when the Party can ill afford internal disorder. Coming just eight days after the election of new National Executives in Kumasi, and barely two years after a bruising general election defeat that reduced the Party’s parliamentary representation from 137 to 88, the message from headquarters is clear that the NPP will not allow the mistakes of the past to be repeated.

The General Secretary, Justin Kodua Frimpong, has been unambiguous. Prospective parliamentary aspirants, their agents, and supporters must immediately cease mounting posters, billboards, and banners; organising rallies and polling station tours; distributing inducements to delegates; and running paid media or social media promotions. Party officers at every level, from polling station to national, including TESCON, are forbidden from promoting aspirants online. Those who flout the directive may find their eligibility to contest affected.

Some may argue that this is an overreach, an unnecessary restriction on the democratic energies of the Party’s base. We disagree. The NPP’s recent history offers ample evidence that premature campaigning breeds acrimony, deepens factional divisions, and advantages those with deep pockets over those with genuine grassroots appeal. The party’s own Code of Conduct recognises this. The directive is not an attack on ambition; it is a defence of fairness.

The timing is instructive. The Prof. Mike Oquaye Committee, which investigated the 2024 defeat, submitted its report to the National Council in April 2025. A nine-member committee is now reviewing the Party’s constitution partly on the basis of those findings. The National Delegates Conference has justinstalled new leadership. The Party is in a season of rebuilding, and rebuilding requires order. Allowing aspirants to flood constituencies with branded materials and inducements before nominations even open would undermine the very unity the party needs to reclaim its lost seats.

Critics will note that at least one aspirant, Alois Kog Kyaakpier Mohl, had already declared his intention to contest the Nandom seat as far back as September. Others have been conducting informal consultations. The directive will unsettle them. But the party’s interest must come before individual ambition. The flag–bearer, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has himself advocated a “winnable candidate search” strategy, arguing that some aspirants can win primaries because they have money but cannot win general elections. That is a sobering assessment, and it deserves the party’s serious attention. A primary process that rewards financial muscle rather than electoral viability is a recipe for another defeat.

We commend the National leadership and the General Secretary for acting with dispatch. We urge constituency and regional executives to enforce the directive strictly and impartially. And we call on all prospective aspirants to respect the ban, not as a constraint on their ambitions but as a necessary condition for a level playing field.

The NPP has a proud tradition of internal democracy. But democracy without discipline is chaos. The party’s starting gun has not been fired. When it is, let it be fired fairly, for all to hear, and for the strongest candidate, not the earliest campaigner to emerge.

The New Publisher stands with the NPP in this necessary exercise of discipline. A Party that cannot govern itself cannot be trusted to govern a nation. The ban on early campaigning is a step toward self-governance. It deserves support, not resistance.