Sekou blasts CPP

Sekou Nkrumah, son of Ghana's first President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, has stated that he was compelled to leave his father's traditional Convention People's Party (CPP) because the party had outlived its usefulness and was therefore no longer relevant to the challenges of the times.

Sekou who joined the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) a few weeks ago was in a full flight when the NDC student branch held a public forum at the Institute of Professional Studies (IPS), Legon, lambasting his father's party.

Stressing that politics was all about showing love and compassion to the people, he observed the CPP of yesteryears was not the same today, and that, even though they might look alike, the CPP had virtually metamorphosed into the NDC.

“I think it is clear that the new CPP is today's NDC. When you have two things that are the same, one of them is definitely useless. And in this case, the useless one is surely not the NDC,” he inferred.

Speaking to a teeming crowd at the jam-packed Great Hall on why he joined the NDC, Dr. Sekou noted that since the inception of the Fourth Republic in 1992, the CPP had continued to fall consistently in almost every election, leaving the political terrain to be dominated by the NDC and the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), stressing that he was appalled by the recalcitrance of the various splinter Nkrumaist groups in presenting a common platform during elections.

According to him, a new revolutionary thinking had, since June 4, 1979, been introduced into the national political psyche, and noted that the new injection had taken over the place of the CPP.

“June 4 brought a call for social justice to re-invigorate Nkrumah's vision, which was truncated by the 1966 coup,” he said.

He also blasted those painting the NDC as a violent party, saying, it was the machinations of the propaganda wing of the government.

Supporting Sekou's claims, Mr. Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, NDC deputy national secretary, said the NPP had tagged the NDC a violent party, to scare people away from joining it, but emphasized that the 1981 revolution brought Ghana back on its feet as a result of the good PNDC leadership.

Calling the leader of the revolution, Flt. Lt. Rawlings, a saint, he said had the NDC founder been power-drunk as was being trumpeted, he would have manipulated the 2000 presidential run-off or held on to power.

On the recent elections in Nigeria, Afriyie-Ankrah said President John Agyekum Kufuor, who is the African Union (AU) chairman, was either mute over the concerns of the international community, or that his remarks were considered by Nigeria as nonsense.

“It is one thing telling lies, and it is another thing talking out of ignorance. But what is worst is attempting to insult the intelligence of the people,” he said, adding that by joining the NDC, Sekou had glaringly shaken the political foundation of the country and changed existing political permutations.