After Changing Propaganda Secretary To Communications Officer: The NDC Must Rethink Its Future

One significant event during the recent congress of the NDC was the change of name of the propaganda portfolio to communications. I argue in this article that what is important for the NDC is not change of names. To reach its potential or remain key in Ghana's politics, the party needs strategic restructuring.

The return to constitutional democracy in 1992 marked a significant change in the rules of the game of politics in Ghana. However, the NDC failed to recognize what constitutional democracy would mean for the future of politics in the country. Therefore, instead of building a party embedded with strong institutions and structures, the founders of the NDC changed the name of the PNDC, added executive portfolios and introduced electoral processes. The party needed more than that.

The party founders in 1992 had the opportunity to formulate strategic roadmaps on how to achieve its vision. Among these roadmaps include strategies on media, labour groups, youth and leadership, corporate party relations and internal democracy. However, the failure to build these strategies is the cause of the many challenges facing the party today.

The media has unquestionable power in making and unmaking governments in a democracy. Ghana is no exception. The NDC government issued most licenses to the now powerful media houses in Ghana. Ironically, the party is the most vulnerable in the media because it failed to recognize the damage an unfriendly media can do to a party. Hence, it failed in creating its own media houses or building strategic ties with existing media houses. The consequence as we see today, has been party that is vulnerable and paralyzed by a powerful media.

In frustration, the party/government attempted turning the information ministry into a media relation's agency and even openly declared its boycott of the Multimedia Group. Such frustration and paralysis and more of those to come, could have been averted if the party founders had a media roadmap to either build credible media houses or established close ties with existing media networks.

The current NDC has left its youth development at the mercy of individual party big wigs without any formal party arrangement for determining how youth are groomed and developed. Therefore, only privileged youth with supportive godfathers in the party get to the political limelight instead of the best. Smart, intelligent and loyal youths are left with no support, thereby growing out of hope and eventually fading out of the party.

The NDC over the past two decades has over-relied on individual influences, thereby limiting its ability to strengthen internal cohesion and democracy. This strong personalities model by the NDC has allowed personalities with strong influence to crowd out competitors in circumstances of disputed claims. This has contributed to the higher number of “break-aways” in the NDC than in any political party. Strong structures provide easy avenues for addressing disputes. They make it difficult for disputes to occur in the first place since such structures allow for more transparency.

This model negatively affects party democracy at the constituency level. This has manifested in circumstances where party sponsored candidates win primary elections and get defeated in the actual parliamentary contest by independent-break-away candidates. Because the current electoral processes permit the use of money and incumbent power to influence constituency electoral processes. For instance, a case was reported of the 2008 parliamentary contest in the Tamale South constituency where a potential candidate was unable to get a single constituency executive to endorse his nomination forms because all the executives were purportedly under the influence of the incumbent MP. As such, the NDC has the highest number of party members as independent parliamentarians compared to NPP for instance.

The NDC has ruled the country for 16 out of 24 years since 1992 but it's yet to come to terms with the need to harness the power of the key interest groups to support its policies and programmes. Labour unions are integral part of the party politics in Ghana. Unions such as GMA, TUC and GNAT have frustrated the NDC government efforts in recent past despite the introduction of the single spine salary scheme; the best thing to happen to Ghana's labour-force for decades. Most of these unions have had elections during the reign of the NDC but the government seemed not interested in identifying and sponsoring its sympathizers to lead these unions.

The dependence of parties on the corporate sector for success in acquiring and keeping political power has become prominent in global politicking. The NDC seems to have recently come to this realization and in the haste to build this relationship, the government ended up piling almost all its contracts on 2 or 3 companies. The SUBAH, GYEEDA and Wayomi cases linked to very few private companies are results of the fact that the NDC has not built a strong corporate presence. Besides, it is easier for other parties to kill alleged NDC supporting companies because such companies are very few and insignificant. The NDC cannot try killing companies sympathetic to other parties without risking economic collapse of the country.

Therefore, instead of just changing the portfolio of propaganda to communication, the party could best restructure the portfolio to create a communications directorate with elected director and deputy (ies). The directorate would then be responsible for recruiting, training and coordinating the work of all party communicators from the national, regional district and constituency levels. This would provide order and standardization to the currently loosed coalition of individual party communicators scattered across the country doing their own things.

It is my hope that the party leadership will go back to the drawing board to redefine the vision of the party, overhaul the party structures and introduce key strategic plans necessary for the long term survival of the party. Without this, the party may remain relevant in Ghana's politics but it would never reach its full potential.

Congrats to the recent winners of the National Delegates Congress.