Put Party Interest Above Personal Ambition

An aspiring flag-bearer of the Convention People's Party (CPP), Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom, has emphasised the need for the party to have a united front to pursue its agenda to recapture power.

He has, therefore, cautioned those seeking election to various positions of responsibility at the national congress not to put personal ambition before the well-being of the party.

He said there were so many people who recently joined the party and were seeking high-level national offices and needed to know the chequered political history the party had gone through.

Dr Nduom was addressing some members of the CPP from six constituencies at Tarkwa as part of his tour of the Western Region to seek strength and inspiration to help him win the flagbearership to lead the party.

Dr Nduom said the CPP tradition had a recent history of going into national delegates' congresses divided and coming out torn into fragments.

He recalled that after the People's Convention Party (PCP) congress in 1996, where Alhaji Asoma Banda was elected chairman and the late Vice-President Kow Nkensen Arkaah elected the flag-bearer, there was so much disunity that Alhaji Banda gave up his chairmanship and quit active politics.

He said the congress that elected Dr Abubakar Alhassan as chairman and Professor Hagan as flag-bearer for the 2000 elections did not fare any better, adding that “those who lost went home to sleep and did not bother to support the flag-bearer or parliamentary candidates.

“The CPP sank to its lowest level with only one Member of Parliament. The divide and conquer politics was repeated when Dr Edmund Delle was elected chairman with Mr George Oposika Aguddey as flag-bearer for the 2004 elections,” he said, and explained that “those who won acted as if they could win the general election with only their supporters”.

He said as a result of that some members of the party did not support the flagbearer and the flag-bearer ignored the parliamentary candidates.

That, he said, resulted in a disappointing total vote of about one-third of what constituted the combined total votes the parliamentary candidates got and that, in effect, Mr Aguddey was rejected in all constituencies and not just in one or two of them.

That experience, he said, should inform the current delegates to elect national executives and flag-bearers who would be acceptable in the 2008 elections.

Story by Kwame Asiedu Marfo