During the heated NDC primaries on Saturday, the Presidential ballot was ongoing- to elect a leader for the NDC for the next elections.

President John Dramani Mahama was standing unopposed, which means members had simply to vote Yes or No on the ballot box.

Yet, although the President was able to muster an overwhelming Yes verdict, 1,199,118 votes, representing 95.10%- the number of people who voted ‘No’ was kind of embarrassing.

For a sitting President, standing unopposed- there seemed to be a lot of people from his own party not interested in going ahead with him. 61,836 people voted ‘No’, representing 4.9%.

For comparison, President Mills won the 2008 election run-off by 40,856 votes. The same President Mills got 96.9% of total votes cast, even when he stood against an opponent, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, in the 2011 NDC primaries.

The President attempted to brush off the huge number of dissenters in his own party- but it’s undeniable that his abysmal performance is being noticed, even in his own party.

He said, in his victory speech:

“I wish to thank those who voted ‘yes’ to endorse my candidature, but I also wish to thank those who voted ‘no’ either in error or deliberately because in the order of nature it is the interaction of agreement and dissent that creates human progress.”

“You can’t produce energy or electric power with only the positive pole. You need the positive pole and negative pole to produce power. It takes tolerance to accommodate dissent.”

Maybe that much no’s is telling him something about 2016. But he’s a politician, so there’s no chance he picks up on subtle cues.