Since the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) sprung up on the political scene, the question that has been on many a lips, naturally, has been whether there is any difference between the PPP and other recent breakaway groups of other political parties, such as the National Reform Party (NRP), the United Ghana Movement (UGM) and the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP).
Until few weeks ago, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom was a leading member of the of the Convention People’s Party (CPP.) It is only weeks since he left the CPP to form and lead the PPP, but some analysts are already making allusions to his future by pointing to the vivid history of breakaway factions – or at least their leading personalities – who not invariably, after many years, re-join their parent groups.
A recount of some recent history would show why these analysts are doing so.
It would be recalled that the National Reform Party (NRP) broke away from the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in 1998, but its members have retraced their steps back to their root and its leading members, such as its presidential candidate for the 2000 Elections, Augustus Goosie Tanoh, are now an integral part of the Professor Mills’ administration. Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobbey and his United Ghana Movement (UGM) also went back to the NPP when the party won the 2000 elections.
Also, the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP,) was created in 2006 out of a group angry over what happened at an NDC Congress at Koforidua. The DFP, led by its chief patron, Dr. Obed Yao Asamoah, moved back to the NDC last year after NDC members handed the Rawlingses probably the most humiliating political defeat of their lives; Mrs. Rawlings lost the NDC 2012 presidential ticket by 3%-96% to President John Evans Atta Mills.
Looking at such a history, the obvious and logical conclusion most an analyst might draw is that Dr. Nduom’s PPP is likely to tread the same path sooner or later. Indeed, everyone we have heard who voices an opinion on this issue believes history is likely to replay itself – same circumstances, same decision, new party, beating a retreat. BUT we on Today wish to draw the attention of such analysts to certain key issues that we believe worked against the independent survival of those breakaway parties.
First, the National Reform Party was born out of intense protestation against hijacking of the internal democratic processes of the NDC. Their stance was premised on the unilateral decision by then President Jerry John Rawlings, who was also the leader of the NDC, to declare Prof. Mills his successor without recourse to the laid-down internal democratic processes of electing a presidential candidate for the NDC.
The main campaign issue that was raised by Goosie Tanoh and other leading members of the NRP, such like Dr. Percy, Kyeretwie Opoku, Mijie Barnor, Kofi Portuphy, Osei Owusu, Emelia Arthur, pointed to the lack of internal democracy in the NDC as the main reason why they left to form the NRP.
Later, the NRP even touted themselves as the group that dealt the severest of blows to the NDC by causing its defeat to the NPP in the 2000 elections. Although the NRP joined hands with other opposition elements and progressive forces to defeat the NDC in the run-off of the 2000 presidential poll, some of its leading members marked up for key positions in President Kufuor’s all-inclusive administration declined the offer.
In a nutshell, the NRP, by 2001, believed that their dream and job were done once they joined other progressive forces toppling the NDC out of national administration. Obviously, Goosie Tanoh and his group only wanted to point it out, categorically, to then President Rawlings that his personal wishes hold sway over that of the majority’s only to the detriment of the party.
Today the group is back to the NDC arguing that their return was facilitated by the fact that the NDC is now conforming to the rules of internal democracy. Second, we on Today believe Ghanaians did not pay much attention to the NRP, because most of its leaders were little known on the Ghana political scene.
Although Goosie Tanoh and his group remains some of the finest group of top middle-class intellectuals in the NDC, their back-stage posture did very little for their pursuit of the highest political office of the land, and that was very much reflected in the results of the 2000 elections. In effect the NRP (in 2000) could not muster the political clout to convince many Ghanaians that they had what it takes to topple the P/NDC administration, which many Ghanaians were eager to get off their backs.
Indeed, at the crescendo of the growing agitation against the NDC, Ghanaians looked at Goosie Tanoh and his young crop of intellectuals as accomplices to the many Draconian legislations enacted by and the bad policies of the PNDC junta that later metamorphosed into the democratic NDC. Goosie Tanoh, for instance, was part of the NDC legal team that passed many of those bad laws, some of which are still on our statutes books.
The Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) shares many of the characteristics stated (above) for the NRP. It was formed out of protest and discontent over the robust and intimidating tactics that had been the forte of the NDC. The party’s chief patron Dr. Obed Yao Asamoah together with other leading members paid a great prize for daring to challenge the decision of NDC’s de-facto leader, former President Rawlings, by challenging his (Rawlings) endorsed candidate, Mills, in NDC’s executive primary held at Koforidua.
Although the DFP contested the 2008 elections as a separate entity, it primary objective, as later events would showed was not necessarily to win the 2008 election, but to cause the defeat of the NDC; just like Goosie and co. in 2000. It was therefore not surprising that the DFP supported the NPP in the 2008 presidential run-off between then candidates Prof John Evans Atta Mills (NDC) and Nana Akufo-Addo (NPP.)
The DFP did not present a different alternative to Ghanaians. All their activities were so similar to those of the NDC that many saw it as a surrogate group of the NDC. Many wanted an alternative to the NDC and NPP, and decided a vote for the DFP would be a waste. Also, its presidential candidate, Emmanuel Ansah Antwi, was little known or unknown in Ghanaian politics. It was very difficult for the electorate to entrust the governance into the hands of a party they hardly knew.
In the case of the UGM, many Ghanaians saw the party as the very embodiment of one individual, Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobbey, and his desire to pursue his unquenchable parochial political desire. Many Ghanaians believed after being defeated by then presidential contender, John Agyekum Kufuor in the NPP presidential primary, Dr Wereko Brobbey should have stayed in the party to help the NPP tradition which was then seeking its first political win in thirty years.
Aside that the UGM could not establish the necessary structures to convince Ghanaians that it was a party well-positioned to keenly compete with the others, particularly the NDC and his former party (NPP) for political power. Most people in the NPP viewed him as a traitor, and it came as no surprise to most Ghanaians when most NPP members and supporters vehemently opposed his appointment as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Volta River Authority.
The paper believes the factors enumerated above are not necessarily what contributed to the emergence of the PPP on the Ghanaian political scene. Dr. Nduom and his group had no intention whatsoever to leave the CPP, except for the burning desire of some elements to force them out of the party because they did not understand particularly Dr Nduom’s way of politics.
With the current position of the CPP, Dr. Nduom believed the only way to compete favourably with the two leading parties, the NDC and NPP, and become relevant in Ghana politics is to do things “politically abnormal” to realize that dream. That means the party should have started working right from the day it lost the 2008 elections by putting in place measures and structures to make sure that it get many members in to the party.
That was exactly what Dr. Nduom resorted to by introducing many lofty projects and novelty models, such as youth, volunteer and movement groups to look for and bring more people into the CPP. Indeed, it must be stressed here that other groups in the CPP were also said to be looking for members and supporters through the Patriot’s group.
We believe much as the Patriots did theirs with no malice intended, so should others within the party have construed the Dr. Nduom move as a well-intended programme tailored towards increasing the numerical strength of the CPP and not as a ploy to get his cronies and assigns to vote for him to become the party’s presidential candidate.
In any case, if the assumption was that Dr. Nduom managed to get majority of his members to become delegates for the CPP Delegates’ Conference, how come that many of the current executive members, including the CPP chairperson – whom Dr. Nduom obviously did not support – win positions in the national executive of the party?
Clearly, it shows how independent-minded those delegates are, so that even if they joined the CPP through the instrumentality of Dr. Nduom, there was no way anyone could cajoled them into voting against their personal wishes and thinking. Obviously therefore, Dr. Nduom’s exit is not about how to script the electoral defeat of the CPP, but the fact that he could no longer come to terms with the docile attitude of the CPP leadership towards their building and re-branding of the CPP for Election 2012.
In our estimation, the CPP, through it snail-paced organization, has shown it was not prepared for the race to the Office of the President, and so any individual who shares a contrary view ought to seek a more vigorous institution that is prepared to put in place structures that will afford him or her the potential of wrestling power from the NDC and NPP.
Dr. Nduom’s PPP is therefore not a breakaway faction seeking to destabilize the CPP (as the NRP and DFP did or sought to do to the NDC.) The PPP was set up as an alternative and more vigorous way of doing electoral politics.
The PPP does not believe in the usual ideological dogmas that many leaders of political parties, including those of the CPP, have entangled themselves with. The PPP is a pragmatic institution that dwells more on the exigencies of the time that require that the individual Ghanaian is a key factor in its operations. In effect the Ghanaian should be at the centre of development and that every effort should be made to build the capability and capacity of the Ghanaian to compete both on local and international levels.
The PPP, according to Dr. Nduom, is a credible alternative with a different agenda and seeks to provide the platform for all like-minded progressive forces to come together to compete against the NDC and NPP in this year’s elections. So unlike the DFP, NRP and the UGM, the PPP has set out clearly that it has a different agenda and not operating within the shadows of the CPP.
Perhaps that explains why many progressive forces, including majority of members of the CPP in particular, have resigned to join the PPP. Currently, the party also has in its fold others from the NDC, NPP and many others who really want to see something positive in politics.
Perhaps the biggest attraction that makes Dr. Nduom different from the Goosies, Wereko-Brobbeys and others is the man’s personality as an individual. The political clout of Dr. Nduom obviously towers above all the others that have gone ahead of him with breakaways. And indeed the political eminence those personalities attained cannot in anyway be compared to that chalked by Dr Nduom over the years.
Dr. Nduom was once an elected Assembly member for the Akotobinsin Electoral Area at Elmina in the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem Constituency in the Central Region. He run twice for the KEEA parliamentary seat and although he lost rather under bizarre circumstances on his first attempt, he maintained his calm composure and won the seat on his second attempt.
He decided not seek re-election, not necessarily because he wanted to run for the presidential ticket of the CPP, but because he felt the workings of Parliament in the current term makes the legislation a rubber stamp, which the Majority uses to pursue its political agenda.
That explains why Dr. Nduom submitted a position paper to the Constitutional Review Commission to review that aspect of the Constitution that makes it mandatory for the president to take majority of ministers from parliament. He believes that is the only way that Parliament would be independent and work as a separate entity from the executive.
Dr. Nduom had also served both as regular minister and cabinet minister where his performance(s) in national administration till date continues to baffle and confound even his critics. His excellent performance as Minister for Economic Planning and Regional Cooperation, Minister of Energy and later Public Sector Reform are as excellent as what he has achieved in his private life where he today offers jobs to some 3,000 Ghanaians.
We on Today believe clearly that with the issues raised, Dr. Nduom’s PPP will confound history by blazing the path it is cutting into a macadamized highway.