The President Is the Party Leader but Not the Party Chairman

I have kept this short news story titled “Akufo-Addo Cause of NPP’s Presidential Primaries Disagreement – Amoako-Baah” Modernghana.com 2/4/23) and been meaning to briefly comment on the same until now, largely due to the flurry of other equally important news events occurring throughout the country and well beyond that I felt needed more immediate attention. It is almost “Dead News,” as we in the media call it, because it has already been, I hope, peacefully and constructively resolved by the key operatives at the Kokomlemle Headquarters of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), of which the subject of this rejoinder is often described by the media as either a stalwart or a prominent member.

It took a diddly while for the impasse surrounding the scheduling of the New Patriotic Party’s 2024 Primaries – both the Presidential and the Parliamentary Primaries – presently scheduled for November 4, 2023, to be resolved because the newly elected top leadership of the party could apparently not hash out a mutually acceptable date for the primaries with Jubilee House or The Presidency.

Now, Dr. Richard Amoako-Baah is right on target to assert that the alleged decision by the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to have the party’s primaries held in February 2024, after his final budgetary statement had been read before Parliament and, in effect, the rest of the country, both breached the standing bylaw or entrenched advisory of the party’s constitution for the primaries to be held at least 12 months before the General Election, so as to ensure ample electioneering campaign time.

In reality, those party leaders calling for the primaries to have been held this coming August would also have been quite reasonable with their proposal, as it goes without saying that time is of the essence if party candidates of a badly savaged government in power are to be able to effectively sell the plethora of grand achievements and the not-so-grand achievements of the Akufo-Addo Administration to a people who feel frustrated by the considerable level of socioeconomic problems wracking the country, even if one agrees with the fact or thesis that, on the whole, the two-term Akufo-Addo Administration has far and away outperformed the previous rag-tag regime of the John “Gnassingbe” Dramani Mahama-led National Democratic Congress.

Now, what the caustic and inveterate critics of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, such as the former Head of the Department of History and Political Science at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), need to bear in mind is that while, indeed, Nana Akufo-Addo is not the proprietor or the founding-owner of the New Patriotic Party, a rather harsh characterization by Dr. Amoako-Baah, the incontrovertible fact still remains that as substantive democratically elected President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, the former John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-appointed Attorney-General and Minister of Justice is for all intents and purposes the bona fide Leader of the ruling party.

But, of course, this position of great influence does not make Nana Akufo-Addo the “Prime Mover” of the New Patriotic Party. The latter function properly belongs to the National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, with the assistance of the several vice-chairpersons of the party and the party’s General-Secretary. Now, the fact that the grievance for which reason Dr. Amoako-Baah, himself a failed contender for the party’s National Chairmanship, chooses to rather intemperately fault the President had long been resolved well before the composition of this column, simply means that contrary to what Dr. Amoako-Baah would have the rest of the party’s membership and the Global Ghanaian Community believe, Nana Akufo-Addo is no Medieval-Era Despot or a postcolonial autocratic leader at all, but one healthily given to the deliberate search for and the forging of consensus.

It also gives the proverbial lie to Dr. Amoako-Baah’s downright and characteristically mischievous attempt to portray the party’s leadership at the New Patriotic Party’s Kokomlemle Headquarters as some toothless toadies or bootlicking flunkies. No such characterization could be more inexcusably unfortunate and absurd. As for Dr. Amoako-Baah’s characterization of Nana Akufo-Addo as a leader obstreperously given to vindictive dealings and the politics of personal destruction, the least said about such purveyance of malice, the better, especially knowing the sort of unprecedentedly vitriolic and protracted gauntlet of soul-stifling vilification that the former New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa-South had to incessantly and relentlessly and systematically endure over the course of nearly a decade on his upward climb into the Presidential Suite of Jubilee House.

Which, of course, is absolutely in no way to portray the personality profile and the general conduct of Nana Akufo-Addo as one that has been completely devoid of any kinks or rough edges; for that has absolutely not exactly been the case.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
May 30, 2023
E-mail: [email protected]