The Delusion of Righteousness: Why the NPP Must Rethink or Relinquish

By Johnathan Danso , Accra

As a loyal and clear-eyed member of the New Patriotic Party, I can no longer afford the comfort of silence. Our party is sleepwalking toward party and electoral collapse, armed with hubris, wrapped in denial, and steered by a leadership team that appears to have mistaken slogans for strategy and deflection for accountability. We have become the architects of our own undoing, not because our opponents are invincible, but because we insist on being politically stone-deaf at a time when the public’s ears are tuned to justice.

Let’s not sugarcoat it: the Ghanaian people unite most fiercely when rallying against perceived theft. It is in that moment of collective indignation that they forget tribal allegiances and partisan loyalty. And yet, instead of acknowledging that visceral disgust for corruption, we serve them recycled apologies and broken messaging, assuming they’ve lost their ability to discern sincerity from performance.

The situation is not only dire, it’s ludicrous. How can we expect support from Ghanaians when the very faces accused of presiding over mismanagement are the ones we present, again and again, as the standard-bearers of reform? Our continued elevation of individuals tied to the narrative of rot, however gifted or articulate, is a political farce. The electorate sees through the choreography, and frankly, they are exhausted by it.

We promised accountability in the National Cathedral establishment , instead we are backpedaling and delivering spurious damage control. Our communicators assured the public that there was nothing untoward in the audit findings, only to be publicly contradicted and ridiculed by the actual Deloitte report, which detailed financial chaos and gross mismanagement . What message does that send? That either we don’t read our own reports or we simply hope the people never do. It is not just inept, it’s insulting the intelligence of the voters.

We allow the image of a former Finance Minister to dangle between Interpol alerts and fugitive headlines while pretending that silence is strategy. We insult public intelligence when we claim moral high ground while violence incidents from past elections under our supervision sit unresolved. Worse still, our spokespeople, often armed with condescension and disconnection, believe that sanctimony sells. It doesn’t. Ghanaians are no longer buying sermons from those who forgot to live the doctrine.

The by-elections didn’t just deliver loss, they delivered a sermon, and we refused to listen. Our party continues to engage in performative governance and ceremonial outrage while the electorate has moved on to substance. What they want is authenticity, accountability, and leadership that is not afraid to clear house fully, loudly, and without condition.

It is time, indeed past time, for a sweeping recalibration. Not a rebranding. Not a new slogan. Not a cosmetic reshuffle. We need a full message overhaul and a change of leadership that prioritizes truth over tribalism and courage over convenience. If we don’t course-correct now, we won’t just lose an election. We’ll lose our relevance. The people have already outgrown our excuses. We must now prove we have outgrown them too.