A former Member of Parliament for Subin, Eugene Boakye Antwi has offered a frank assessment of the party’s defeat in the 2024 general elections, blaming a raft of post-pandemic economic measures that he says alienated voters and eroded public trust.
Speaking on Channel One TV’s ‘Face to Face’ with Umaru Sanda Amadu, Eugene Boakye Antwi, who represented the Subin constituency in the Ashanti Region, said the NPP government’s decision to implement austerity-driven policies after COVID-19 significantly hurt its electoral chances.
“The economy was on the right track before COVID-19 struck,” Mr Boakye Antwi said. “But after that, all hell broke loose. We had to introduce policies like the E-Levy, the Betting Tax and those kinds of interventions did not help us at all.”
His remarks come as the NPP grapples with internal soul-searching following its unexpected loss at the polls, ending its eight-year rule.
Among the most controversial policies introduced was the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP), aimed at restructuring Ghana’s ballooning public debt. Mr Boakye Antwi noted that the programme had a devastating effect on confidence in the government, particularly after President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s earlier assurances that individual savings and pensions would be untouched.
“There was a promise of no haircut, but a haircut came anyway,” he lamented. “It wiped away savings, pensions, investments. And that hurt us badly. It didn’t just impact the economy, it wounded us.”
Mr Boakye Antwi’s comments echo growing discontent within the party’s base, with many rank-and-file members expressing frustration over the handling of the economy in the pandemic’s aftermath. Observers have pointed to broken promises and unpopular tax measures as critical factors in the NPP’s electoral downfall.
