Nduom To Found Progressive People's Party

Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom

The new party to be unveiled by next month will be known and called the Progressive People's Party (PPP), the Daily Graphic can authoritatively confirm.

With a full glowing red sun on a white background as its emblem, the new party has Red and White as its colours.

Currently, the party has reached an advanced stage in collating the appropriate signatories countrywide to enable it to formally register with the Electoral Commission as a political party.

The new party hopes to receive its provisional certificate from the EC by the end of this week.

Sources within the new party confirmed the new party's status to the Daily Graphic in Accra Wednesday.

However, when the Daily Graphic contacted Dr Nduom, he only gave the assurance that the Independent Progressive Movement, which he formed after his exit from the Convention People's Party (CPP) last month was doing every thing possible to remain relevant in Ghanaian contemporary politics.

He reiterated that the movement was working with like-minded men and women across the country to contest the 2012 Presidential and Parliamentary elections.

“Our representatives in all the 10 regions are working assiduously to set up functional party structures and offices to enable us take off without any major hitch,” he told the Daily Graphic in an interview.

He said the team was prepared to do everything possible to give Ghanaians an alternative that was progressive and different in a very positive way saying that “since the announcement, our office has been inundated by calls from across the country asking how they can join this new movement.”

Dr Nduom was CPP's 2008 Presidential Candidate but recently announced that he had quit the CPP.

When he addressed supporters at Ho in the Volta Region last Tuesday, he observed that his vision of a new political party was a neo-nationalist movement where competence and not sentimental attachments would call the shots.

He also addressed scores of ex-CPP constituency executives and supporters in the Volta Region at Hohoe.

I
n a report monitored on Joy FM, Dr Nduom said there had been too much bickering in the Nkrumaist ranks in the past years and, therefore, the need for a positive breakaway in the interest of the national good.

He said the number of people willing to associate with the emerging political force would astound analysts.

Dr Nduom urged his supporters to go back into the fields and orgainse to bring as many card bearing members on board.

He said the region was the first stop of the “Join the Nduom Movement Campaign” and that people in the area should be weary about voting almost en-bloc for one party in past elections.

He said work to get people into the new party would be strenuous and that all communication methods would be used to put the ideals of the movement before the people forcefully.

Dr Nduom introduced a 22-member Regional Interim Management Committee to the gathering. It was chaired by Mr Godwin Sadzi, a teacher and has seven women to reflect the importance of women in all spheres of national life.

Mr David Mensah Bisah, a member of the Youth Volunteers to run Dr Nduom's campaign, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that only Nkwanta-North and Biakoye constituencies were not represented at the meeting which he believed could be due to distance or logistical reasons.

Last December was full of drama. First was the announcement by Dr Nduom that he was no longer going to contest the 2012 presidential election on the ticket of the CPP.

After weeks of speculation, Dr Nduom let the cat out of the bag when at a press conference in Accra, he announced the launch of an un-named political movement that would eventually metamorphose into a political party.

A bitter power struggle in the CPP appeared to have come to an end with his departure. In recent times open disagreements in the leadership of the CPP stunned the general public.

The CPP, a centre-left party, formed by Ghana's First President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah and which won independence for Ghana, has performed very poorly since the advent of the Fourth Republic.

An off-shoot of the CPP, the People's National Party (PNP), won the 1979 election with Dr Hilla Limann emerging as President, but his administration was curtailed on December 31, 1981 when Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings launched the 31st December Revolution.

Strangely, when the ban on political parties was lifted, the CPP family was in tatters, with several parties springing up claiming to be the true CPP. That rivalry persists as efforts to bring all of them together as one party have failed.

The election of Samia Yaba Nkrumah, the daughter of the late First President of Ghana, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, as leader of the CPP was, therefore, seen as a unifying factor.

But these hopes quickly disappeared as the cracks in the party became wider with open disagreement on the agenda of the party.

Only a few weeks ago, Samia Nkrumah openly accused Dr Nduom, a former MP for Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem, of

orchestrating activities to disintegrate the party, when matters came to a head.