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Managing Editor of the Insight Newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr, says the New Patriotic Party (NPP) needs to ask why the party is unpopular and appear unattractive to the Ghanaian electorate and he has advised the NPP to pick a few lessons from the history books and also reflect on their 2008 electoral defeat. To him, though records indicates that the Danquah-Busia-Dombo party has won 3 elections in the country since 1951, the circumstances underlying the 1969 electoral victory makes it a sham as the NPP twisted the hands of its political opponents and even banned District Chief Executives and Constituency Executives from participating in that particular election. "Since 1951, the New Patriotic Party has actually won only 3 elections (1969, 2000 and 2004)...these are the only elections that the NPP or that tradition has won in this country. Now it is important to put on record that they won the 1969 elections only because the hands of the CPP were tied behind them. Every functionary of the Convention Peoples Party including District Chief Executives and Constituency Executives were banned from participating in that election. The CPP itself was banned and could participate in the election�" "Indeed, after the 1969; they had the effrontery to ban the display of Nkrumah�s photographs. After the 1966 coup, intellectuals and all made bonfires out of Nkrumah�s books. It was in these circumstances that they won the 1969 election. So you can discount the 1969 election and focus attention on 2000 and 2004 elections. So strictly speaking, the NPP and the tradition it represents, since 1951 have won only 2 elections in this country." "And I think that if I were a member of that party, I�ll be asking myself serious questions about why they are not popular and they do not appear to be attractive to the Ghanaian electorate. They need to reflect, they need to take measures which will make them more attractive than they have been in our history, throughout our history,� he said. Contributing to discussions on Radio Gold�s �Alhaji and Alhaji� programme, Mr Pratt opined that these reflections will bring to the open some of the issues surrounding the NPP's electoral defeat in 2008. In his estimation, the NPP needs a reality check and the party must also put a stop to its never-flying propaganda on the health of President Mills and also cease postulating that Ghana is a living �hell�. �What was their campaign message in 2008? One, that if Prez Mills won the election, he would become a poodle of the former Prez Mr Jerry John Rawlings�Today, everybody knows that Prez Mills is not a poodle of Mr Rawlings�so that campaign message has been completely shattered. The other campaign message they put out was that look if you vote for Prof Mills, he will die. The man is so sick, he has cancer, he has all kinds of diseases and he is not likely to survive. In spite of this campaign of vilification of lies and slander, which unfortunately used the health of the President as the focal point, he won the election�." "Now if you�re in the New Patriotic Party and you are going for another election, would you still hinge your campaign on the health of the President? It has failed you once, it is going to fail you again and it will fail you anytime you bring it up. So it is important to focus attention on critical issues. And in focusing attention on critical issues, you have first and foremost to accept that reality�.and then on the basis of the reality put out suggestions for improving that reality." "Now what is that reality? That reality is that all the social intervention programmes (capitation grant, access to education, school feeding) introduced by the Kufuor Administration have been improved upon�You�ve got to appreciate that reality�. It is important for the NPP to realize that its propaganda, its message and so on, is more and more alienating people from it and making it impossible for people to rally to its call for a change in government,� he said. Giving the NPP free lessons on when and how to propagandize, he advised them to �at least tell lies� which are plausible and difficult to easily rubbish off. ��if you are engaged in propaganda, if propaganda is what you want to do, if you want to tell lies and so on about your political opponents, at least tell lies which are believable and which are difficult to dismantle. You go and make a statement that the president is in Cuba and that he is suffering from kidney failure�you go and make a statement that the president is missing�meanwhile, the president is in New York�so that lie, that propaganda, will collapse. And those who engage in this kind of propaganda are not smart after all, because in the final analysis they do irreparable damage to themselves�" "The president who is dying, who has been rushed to Cuba and so on, is speaking in New York at 3:30am, with a clear voice, upbeat�the whole propaganda, the whole rumour has collapsed. And indeed it�s so easy to check these days to see whether or not indeed he�s calling from New York or not. Infact, you can even use the GPS system on an ordinary phone to tell the position of the president when he�s speaking to you on a mobile phone. So this baseless, absolutely reckless irrelevant propaganda is something that we should all avoid,� he stated.