For many, the race for the New Patriotic Party’s presidential nomination is a straight fight between the party’s 2008 presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Mr Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen, who came a distant second in the NPP’s presidential race in December 2007.
But underground investigations by Today suggest strong moves by the former boss of COCOBOD and one time Ghana’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Mr Isaac Osei, to upstage the so-called two front-runners in the NPP’s presidential nomination – Nana Akufo-Addo and Alan Kyerematen late this year.
Mr Isaac Osei, Ghana’s High Commissioner, United Kingdom
The paper gathered a sudden switch of allegiance, albeit underground, towards the Isaac Osei cause by some leading backers of Nana Akufo-Addo and Alan Kyerematen. The shift, as the paper gathered, is to forestall any nasty fallout from an outcome of an Alan-Nana presidential square-off.
Indications are that certain elements in the party, especially those backing the Alan candidature have sworn fire and brimstone should the party, as they put it, “adopts similar unorthodox means to get Alan out of the race like it happened at the last presidential congress of the NPP.”
Alan and his supporters have not forgiven the leadership of the NPP by the deliberate smear campaign waged and started by Lord Commey, the National Organizer of the NPP, at the conference grounds of the National Delegates Congress of the party to elect a flag bearer in 2007.
They believed that singular act had the approval of the party hierarchy, especially party chairman Peter Mac Manu, who prior to the congress had demonstrated a clear affinity to the Akufo-Addo cause.
Nana Addo’s supporters believe their candidate have an unfinished agenda that can only be completed in 2012 and even hold the conviction that Alan backers, chief among them, former President Kufuor, conspired to ditch Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2008 elections.
“If Kufuor deliberately killed the presidential dream of Nana to make way for their protégé, then they are in for a shock. We will resist with our very lives any attempts to actualize an Alan candidature,” a selfless Nana Addo supporter hinted with gusto.
The party’s leadership often plays it down, but the reality of the Alan-Nana struggle has gone beyond quality considerations to the realm of ethnicity. And why Nana’s supporters from his ethnic group consider it a right for their candidate to be offered another chance, the contention within the Alan camp is that getting to his late 60s, Nana might not possess the same alertness that he exhibited during his days with the Movement for Freedom and Justice in the 70s or the Alliance for Change in the 90s.
Yet the counter claim had been that elsewhere in Africa, Presidents assume the reigns of power sometimes at their twilight and still managed to bring stability and progress to otherwise lethargic governments of younger administrators. A reference point has been Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal who came to power at age 70.
They again contend that if Kufuor was offered a second chance in 2000 then nothing is wrong asking delegates of the NPP to make another offer to Nana Akufo-Addo and wondered whether it was politically feasible to present to the electorate another person from the tribe of the immediate past President.
With what seems a rigmarole many party chiefs are beginning to be frustrated at the Alan-Nana struggle which they believe has the potential of wrecking the chances of the NPP in 2012.
“We don’t want to suffer another 1979 where we failed to deal with personal egos of two individuals that caused us a great deal,” an Octogenarian NPP functionary told Today. Some of the older folks, the paper gathered, are tutoring the younger generation about how similar antagonism caused the party some years back and therefore the need to settle on a neutral candidate.
The UP group which was manifested in the Popular Front Party (PFP) had a splinter in the United National Convention led by William Ofori Atta in the 1979 elections.
Such top guns are aware of how a similar struggle between the late Victor Owusu and William Ofori Atta (Paa Willie) a member of the Big Six, ruined the chances of the UP tradition, of which the NPP takes its roots, in the 1979 elections won by an off spring of the CPP-the People’s National Party (PNP).
Although they believe it might be unthinkable for anybody to secede from the NPP to form a rival party, the possible repercussion from the fallout of an Alan-Akufo-Addo race has the potential of causing serious apathy and inertia within the rank and file of the NPP.
Supporters of Mr Isaac Osei, the paper found out, are taking advantage of the obvious antagonism between the two front runners to push for his candidature, which many within the Alan-Nana divide are beginning to switch allegiance believe evokes humility and compromise, the two basic requirements in any popular contest.
Other top party people, who hitherto were torn between the Alan-Nana Addo camps, are said to be carefully analyzing the Isaac Osei equation and are likely to dump Nana and Alan for the peace and general cohesiveness of the party.
Isaac Osei, Today discovered, is very much aware about how his popularity is growing quietly within the party and is putting structures, especially in his home region to push for his candidature. Insiders from his camp believe their candidate is above ethnic partisanship and has what it takes to dilute the talk that it would not be prudent to present him because he is from the same ethnic group as the immediate past president.
“Look, what is really the difference between an Ashanti and the Akyem? Invariably they are all from the Akan stock with very little to choose from their dialect. If that is the case then the party should not present an Akan candidate at all; then we would know that the NPP is going for a candidate outside of the Akan extraction,” an Isaac Osei convert stated.
SPECIAL REPORT: RICHMOND KEELSON
