Kwame Pianim May Very Well Become NPP’s Cassandra

He may not be exactly accurate about the presently apparent irrelevance of the Rump-Convention People’s Party (R-CPP), the veritable travesty of the Kwame Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party (CPP). or what this writer has chosen to classify as the “Proto-Convention People’s Party.” And this is obviously because over the course of time, particularly with the prolonged prohibition of the usage of the names of the country’s First-Generation, Post-Independence Political Parties by the leaderships of the various successive junta regimes that came after the Kwame Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party on February 24, 1966, including the Lt-Col. Ernest Kwasi Kotoka, Lt-Gen. Joseph Arthur Ankrah and Maj. Akwasi Amankwaa Afrifa-led National Liberation Council (NLC); the Lt-Col. Ignatius (Kwasi) Kutu Acheampong-led National Redemption Council (NRC), subsequently redesignated as the Supreme Military Council (SMC-1); the Brig-Gen. Frederick William Kwasi Akuffo-led Supreme Military Council (SMC-2); and the Flt-Lt. Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-led Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and, subsequently, the Rawlings-led Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC).

But perhaps the most significant issue to underscore or highlight here, with regard to Mr. Kwame Pianim’s otherwise ineluctably and poignant assessment of the practical irrelevance of the Convention People’s Party, is the equally glaring failure of this astute statesman and former politician to recognize and acknowledge the fact of the core remnants of the leadership of the original Convention People’s Party having been deftly and strategically coopted into the erstwhile Rawlings-led junta of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC).

Which means that, unlike the present-day J B Danquah, K A Busia and S D Dombo-inspired so-called Center-Right institutional establishment of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the CPP has actually been politically boosted by the rise and the significantly improved strength of the Rawlings-founded National Democratic Congress, even if one also undeniably acknowledges that such phenomenal rise and the domination of Ghana’s postcolonial political terrain and culture has not been decently achieved via the civilized engagement of the globally recognized democratic principles of the rule of law and order.

The foregoing fact of the practical reality notwithstanding, there can equally practically also be no gainsaying that the Rump-Convention People’s Party leadership clearly appears to have forged a functionally effective relationship with the leadership of the National Democratic Congress that has enabled a remarkable number and percentage of the key operatives of the otherwise decidedly and functionally effete and mothballed Convention People’s Party land themselves several significant ministerial cabinet and executive non-cabinet appointments in the Mahama and the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia-chaperoned National Democratic Congress.

Now, the preceding mutually beneficial arrangement between these two Left-Leaning institutional political establishments appears to be working to the desired effect because relatively speaking, the junta or the military foundations of the Rawlings-founded National Democratic Congress that strategically afforded the latter establishment or political party a level and magnitude of discipline that is sorely lacking among the characteristically and the perennially warring factions of the leadership of the New Patriotic Party, that makes the keen observer of Ghana’s Fourth Republican Political Culture wonder whether the wholesale acquisition of military training recently acquired by the Imperial National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress, to wit, “Lt-Col.” Johnson “The Bui Dam Woyome,” would not effectively and progressively put the direly needed brakes on the seemingly interminably abject lack of a cohesive sense of a unified purpose among the vanguard leadership and the operatives of the proverbial Elephant Riders’ Party.

This rancorous and collectively self-destructive state of affairs is nothing short of disconsolately tragic, if also because generally speaking, the performance track record of the leadership of the National Democratic Congress unspeakably far pales in significance when juxtaposed against that of the leadership of the New Patriotic Party. Which also indubitably explains why the two New Patriotic Party-sponsored Presidents of Ghana’s Fourth Republic, namely, Messrs. John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor and Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, were each readily and resoundingly afforded two consecutive mandates at the Presidency by an overwhelming majority of the country’s electorate.

Now, coming to the critical and the unignorable question regarding the timing of the selection or the election of the 2028 Presidential Nominee and Candidate of the so-called Elephant Party, the criticism of renowned Yale University and the University of New Brunswick, Canada, educated economist and economic development expert is decidedly and unarguably unimpeachable. You see, as Mr. Pianim clinically and poignantly observes, the January 31, 2026 scheduled Presidential Primary, aimed at electing the December 7, 2028 Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, is clearly and inadvisably tantamount to putting the proverbial cart before the horse instead of vice versa (See “NPP Risks Becoming as Irrelevant as CPP if not Restructured - Kwame Pianim” Modernghana.com 8/14/25).

In the strategically well-informed opinion of the renowned investor, industrialist and sometime in-law of the globally renowned media mogul, Mr. Rupert Murdoch, and one with which Yours Truly is unreservedly in perfect agreement, the construction of any significant and worthwhile architectural monument must, perforce, be predicated upon a solid or a granitic foundation, if such a monument is to last well into the future and over several generations, such as the famous Taj Mahal of India, otherwise it risks ending up as a total waste of time, energy and resources.

Which is why in the astute and acute estimation and opinion of the firebrand fighter of junta dictatorship (Mr. Pianim spent a decade as a political prisoner of the Rawlings-led Provisional National Defense Council), the most strategically effective and appropriate step to readying up the New Patriotic Party for a fighting chance in the December 2028 General Election, in particular the 2028 Presidential Election, is to first elect the party’s National Executives and its Regional and Local Executives as well, before deciding on a date for the election of the party’s 2028 Presidential Candidate or Nominee.

It is quite reasonable to believe and suppose the “Echo-Chamber”-fixated party leadership to have smugly and cavalierly ignored this most significant and witty advice from an astute gentleman who is not only much better educated and politically experienced than an overwhelming majority of our leaders and professional elites, but one who may also be much older than many, if not most, of the parents and grandparents of a remarkable percentage of our party and government leaders. Ultimately, however, what most matters here is the critical question of whether the seemingly desperate leadership of the New Patriotic Party would rather ready themselves for a fiercely contested 2028 General Election or resign and content themselves with being effectively stuck on the arid and the gray margins of opposition political culture for the foreseeable future.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: okoampaahoofekwame@gmail.com

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