NPP: leadership dramatics and cascades

I am joining the current political debate generated by Dr Arthur Kennedy's book 'Chasing the Elephant Into The Bush' because it seems to be degenerating into another almost inscrutable cancer eating the party and possibly worse than the damaging bi-polarity within the ranks of the great democratic party of the Dankwa-Busia-Dombo tradition.

I am submitting my share because in politics, some people talk and others don't, yet on occasion, the quiet man must voice his deep-seated concerns when it appears that the all-powerful leaders at all levels are skidding off the main track. I am through this submission going to look at the electoral lessons that the NPP seems NOT to be imbibing in preparation for a potential 2012 electoral victory.

The New Patriotic Party first shot itself in the foot in 2008 when the leadership allowed as many as 17 persons to campaign for selection to the presidency of the Republic of Ghana. I wish the reader to recall the frenzied days leading to the Legon primaries ballot on a day that laid bare to dust all the green lawns of the large university campus.

So 17 persons danced on the Legon stage to curry delegates' votes while Ghanaians watched askance, even though at this initial stage some people like myself enjoyed the musical jamboree that accompanied the event.

Some friends agreed with me when I observed that it appeared at the time that the NPP had been hit by another disease by which every and any party bigwig looking into a mirror saw a presidential-looking person smiling back at him.

It was not funny at all because what the crowded primaries succeeded in doing was to sow hydra-headed pockets of factions in the party from the beginning of the national presidential campaign between the political parties. In mathematical terms, we entered the campaign period as a team suffering from a disease called seventeen factions.

Then General Mosquito fired a salvo by finding a good NDC campaign slogan: '17 thieves are meeting to select the Chief Thief.' Funny as this sounded, it was given all seriousness by the generality of Ghanaians in the then opposition strain and even from our own ranks.

Surprisingly, the NPP did not fire back nor deny the obviously false and cheap accusation with any energy. Self-made businessmen that they are, the candidates were too busy running round for delegate votes to notice the potentially damaging accusation.

So this emboldened the NDC propaganda machinery to put out more damaging diatribes. Word went round that worse than the mirror image illness, the NPP echelons had found that “president sweet” at a time when the then president had lost most of his youthful black hair while shoring up the Ghanaian economy and dealing with opposition lies and machinations.

We created the wrong impression by sending out signals interpreted by Ghanaians that the Presidency is a sweet place to be. We created the impression that 17 of our leaders were at each other's throats over a presidency that was greatly sweet rather than a terrible but honourable responsibility owed to Ghana and Ghanaians.

I am laying more emphasis on the embarrassing scramble for Ghana's presidency because out of the 17 primaries candidates, I beg to say that 71% were PRESIDENTIAL NONENTITIES who had no credentials whatsoever for wanting to become the chief executive of an independent African country in the twenty-first century.

African politics
They would collapse under the weight of African politics that Kuffuor managed to carry on his shoulders for eight years. It is said that the illness that rendered the vulture bald would have resulted in decapitation if it had afflicted the crow. “Yadea a emaa kokosakyi ti ho paae no yee anene, a anka ne ti bête”. One such presidential nonentities is Dr Arthur Kennedy, an otherwise respected medical scientist.

He should not be angry to read my humble opinion of his presidential ambitions because he is not alone among the presidential nonentities, a general African syndrome, and I am not the only person who shares the opinions that I am expressing here.

I believe in CVs and also believe that in modern CVs you must list your key successes and ground-breaking achievements along your career development path. If the former NPP Presidential hopeful did indeed submit such a CV with the mentioned required details, then the party leadership made a huge mistake by concluding him and so many others like him qualified to run for the high office of the President of the Republic.

Some of us were so astonished as the NPP primaries list grew longer and taller by the day; then some of us began to snicker embarrassingly that “The party needs the money, Buddy.” I have forgotten anything presidentially-significant that the respected medical doctor proffered on the Legon primaries platform.

When Kuffuor set out young, and knowing that he had to build foundations for his future political ambitions, he immediately declared Politics as his chosen profession. So it was, money notwithstanding, managerially wrong for the party leadership to allow some people to crowd the party primaries' stage. Besides dividing the party ranks, it diffused the NPP message: “Vote for the NPP” to the larger Ghanaian population. There was only a cacophony of “Vote-for-me”s and nana's victory speech of reconciliation was heard by inattentive ears and people smiling sour grapes. We need a much stronger unity.

If we want, as we must, let us look at another lesson that we need to put on our mental back-burners. It is with regard to the musical jamborees that characterized the NPP presidential campaign. The musical jams of the NPP campaign scored and generated negative sentiments among Ghanaians for the glaring reason that they were overdone. Whoever suggested that the candidate should be dragged around a heated last-minute campaign platform cajoling him to dance with a whole circus dancing around him?

A lot of people called the musical charade “dripping money” and not a small number of Ghanaians felt it as an insult when they saw “good money being thrown away”. In contrast to our “NPP cacophony”, the opposition came out with only a simple heart-warming tune from a bloke called Lucky Mensah, who was perhaps not even lucky enough to be paid or paid respectably. Some of us tried to say out to be heard that the musical jamborees and the crowded stage drowned the candidate and threw a well-thought out message into the wind. Did we want to achieve fun or communication?

Did we have to bring to this crowded stage characters like Nana Kwame Ampadu and especially Maame Dokono and Frances Asiam? I tell you, whatever these characters said on stage, they said it to sell themselves. I tell you again, whatever these characters contributed to the NPP electoral defeat with their presence on our campaign stages was huge, just by being there.

People of shifting alliances, litigants of pugnacious modes are political liabilities. Even in the workplace, we learn that the person who comes to badmouth another to you will also badmouth you to others. We need to shape our future paths and choose our friends with tact and caution.

Now, when we think back on election 2008, we must pause to reflect on the glaring mistakes that we made some of which are still lingering. I state here that the most damaging threat to the NPP victory I 1012 is the bipolarity that party leaders are trying to deny. It is REEEEAL and is dragging electoral defeat for NPP along wherever it goes in Ghana.

The other day I was sitting by this radio when an NPP Chairman in some constituency somewhere made this statement to Kwame Sefa Kayi and for that matter to all Ghanaians: “We should not play ostriches and pretend that there are no two divides within the NPP.” Some people prefer to call it factionalism, or the tentacles of internal bi-polarism.

The phone-in listeners did not mince words. If the existing and expanding divide within the NPP agglomerated around Mr Alan Kyeremateng and Nana Akuffo Addo, and the threats inherent therein are not diffused RIGHT NOW, internal conflicts will grow and catalyze the party to implode, to the loss of Ghanaians who have rested their hopes on the NPP and the Dankwa-Busia-Dombo political tradition and an expected victory for 2012. Their hopes must not turn into mirages! Already, the constituency nominations and elections have in some places posted signals that we may through our own political greed spell defeat for the NPP in 2012.

Constituency elections have already turned bloody with liberal supplies of black eyes and in one case a police officer was reportedly shot! Who are responsible for order in the party at this critical time? We are very obviously not learning from both our mistakes and the mistakes of others.

The public affairs office of the party is yet to let the party following come to strongly feel that it is the party, its political and economic philosophy as well as its electoral victories that are cardinal roots binding its faithful together, and not the characters, personalities and scarecrows scrambling for positions. In all such melee, the fingers of former DCEs, former MPs, party Chairmen and sitting MPs can be counted in several places. So far this is the only problem among the problems of the NPP that is shared by the ruling NDC party.

party constitution
The party constitution must be looked at again so that a solution can be found for this nagging friction between party Chairmen and sitting MPs whenever party elections rear their heads. These undesirable and divisive activities are the results of events at the top cascading down into the ranks so that even the post of village or District party secretary has to be fought for by drawing blood amd at bets blackening eyes.

Even in my mother's village, the youth hold discussions and arguments very intelligently about which of the constituency and town leadership belong to the Nana or Alan faction. I believe we are courting disaster for 2012, mark it on the wall. Things have gone that bad and the party leadership must sit right up right now.

Can we view the prospect of Nana and Alan appearing in public together to make a common friendly statement to the party faithful and Ghanaians that a political arrangement has been reached to diffuse the factional engagement? The NPP is in dire need of a better-focused Communications outfit. One party faithful summed it up by saying flippantly that “we don't hear teeh” from the holy party headquarters. 'Teeh' is a pidgin word for NOTHING.

When I was practicing this article on my wife, I wanted to use the word “propaganda”. The little communications that the party headquarters communications outfit has done has lacked bite and any level of stringency.

The NDC officially has a Propaganda Office, and with people like Tony Aidoo and Fiifi Kwertey around, they did devastating damage to the chances of the NPP in election 2008.

I am one of the people who believe that if the right things had been done and the wrong things had not been done there obviously would have been no need to have a dangerous run-off that we lost. We allowed anti-NPP propaganda to 'go scot free”.

For example the NDC sought to link Nana with cocaine. Besides Nana's soft denial, nothing else to the contrary was passed through the ears of Ghanaians from the almighty party headquarters. The same NDC propaganda machine created another riddle around about the sources of campaign funds and the NPP simply slept with it: NDC Question: How are those guys financing that expensive campaign?”

The tongue-in-cheek answer we should have debunked was: Cocaine. We slept when our political opponents went about slandering our campaign and besmearing our leader.

Does any PR happen at the party headquarters? Propaganda is the deliberate distortion or misplacement of facts and figures for public consumption for political gain. It is not every Ghanaian who easily discerns political untruths as untrue, especially when we all have political leanings and affiliations.

If party faithful are not are not sufficiently educated on the party's vision, how can they propagate it to others? At our little meetings at Lashibi, we regularly discuss what to tell others [NPP] and how to explain to yet others [NDC] and still what to tell others[undecided and floating voters]. We even emphasize the advice; “If the person says he is not interested, the next person, or the next will be interested”.

We have much work to do, no two ways about that and the worst thing to do now is to dance the death dance of divisionism. By the way, what is in Party Chairmanship that make us go public and trade insults? What happened at Daboase between Mr Tawiah Amprofi and the immediate past Regional Minister and NPP MP for Mpohor was only one example except that in this case it was between a DCE and this time a Regional Minister and not the party chairman or MP. The embarrassing news story had some comedy for those with some humour and I laughed myself hoarse from the drama of it.

The DCE, wanting to contest the Mpohor seat [lost to NDC by the former Regional Minister] in 2012, allegedly sponsors his own candidates for all the constituency executive positions knowing well that that incumbent executive are likely to be 'in cahoots with the former RM”.

Then, by some twist of fate his whole set of candidates crashes in defeat at the constituency elections. So the factional leaders, Amprofi and the defeated former Regional Minister take each other to the public laundry in a competition of insults and counterclaims that the older man tried to temper. Reading about the whole fracas was so embarrassing that I wished I had laid hands on the whole issue of the paper and burned them in love for the NPP! When I told this to somebody in the NDC he only told me “It serves you right.” I did not know whom he meant.

It is these matters that feed the propaganda machinery of the NDC, and we are lucky that they are too busy settling their own internecine wars to care about the NPP civil war. But surely, they will get to it soon. We are giving the NDC raw materials and fuel and ammunition all at the same time, while weakening ourselves and splitting our ranks. The NDC propaganda and publicity machinery is obviously smarter than any in the NPP. Let me use just one example. Only Kuffuor came out like a lonely leader to deny that the supposed “Hotel Kuffuor” or Regency Hotel had nothing to do with him and belonged to his international businessman son for Crissakes!. The Old Man Saoud also came out, then that was all, with the opposition propaganda machine waxing happy, after Kwesi Pratt, their henchman had invited himself to do a publicized and almost publicly promoted walk to take pictures of the private property.

I like this saying in the Bible: “ Gyina pintinn” Stand firm, which we seem not to be trying to do. If we were, I would add another slogan”, Forward, march! NPP”. The infighting and factionalism within the NPP must stop if we are wise. The party must rather assess its past mistakes objectively and without acrimony, not to repeat them as we are doing now. We must turn our weaknesses into strengths and our threats into viable opportunities. In the animal world that we belong to, the lions easily catch their meals when two antelopes lock horns over leadership of the harem and become inattentive. Let us think as people who love their party more than what they can perhaps make from political office. It is only personal gain and political preferment that would make a foot soldier of an African political party punch another party foot soldier in the mouth as has been happening.