I am very grateful for the opportunity of this excellent platform to share a few thoughts with you about who we are and what we are as sons and daughters of the Great Elephant family, the New Patriotic Party.<\/p>\n
We trace our roots to that fateful Saturday, August 4, 1947, at Saltpond, when great nationalists of the time, George Alfred \u2018Paa\u2019 Grant, J B Danquah, Francis Awoonor-Williams, R S Blay, George More, R S Wood, J W de Graft Johnson, Ebenezer Ako Adjei William Ofori-Atta, Edward Akufo-Addo, and Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey, gathered to inaugurate the United Gold Coast Convention, the first truly nationalist party of the Gold Coast, at a gathering which included paramount chiefs, clergymen, lawyers, entrepreneurs, teachers, traders and \u201cmen and women from all walks of life in the Gold Coast\u201d, according to an eye witness.<\/p>\n
In a deliberate act of the continuum of Ghanaian history, the date of 4th August was chosen to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Aborigines Rights Protection Society by John Mensah Sarbah, Joseph Casely Hayford and others on August 4, 1897.<\/p>\n
In the words of the chronicler, L H Ofosu-Appiah, August 4, 1947 \u201cmarked the beginning of a new era in the Gold Coast.\u201d It is the date which shaped and determined the course of our collective history \u2013 setting the stage for an organised front for Ghana\u2019s independent struggle. It is also the event which gave birth to our political tradition and the principles and values that have guided it to this day.<\/p>\n
What made this group national was that it was built to incorporate all the small nationalist movements of the time, including Obetsebi-Lamptey\u2019s National League of the Gold Coast and J B\u2019s Youth Conference. Paa Grant chaired the August 4 occasion and Dr Danquah delivered the inaugural address. J B began his Saltpond address: \u201cWe have come from all the corners of this country, come to Saltpond for a specific purpose: for a decision.<\/p>\n
We have come to take a decision whether our country and people are any longer to tolerate a system of government under which those who are in control of government are not under the control of those who are governed\u2026 We must have, here and now, if we are to be governed, a new kind of freedom, a Gold Coast freedom, a Gold Coast liberty. We left our homes in Ghana and came down here to build for ourselves a new home. There is one thing we brought with us from ancient Ghana [over 870 years ago]. We brought with us our ancient freedom. Today the safety of that freedom is threatened, has been continuously threatened for a 100 years, since the Bond of 1844, and the time has come for a decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
The freedom that our forefathers fought for was not only from foreign control but also from internal oppression and, hence, the courageous and principled role played by activists of the tradition in the First Republic, including the martyrdom of Danquah and Obetsebi-Lamptey and the long periods of political detention suffered by hundreds of hundreds of UP activists under the obnoxious Preventive Detention Act.<\/p>\n
To the peril of their lives, they were not ready to compromise in their belief that independent Ghana had to be built on democratic principles. Indeed, the UP refugees in Lome, Abidjan and Lagos, in the early 1960s, were the first political refugees in post-colonial Africa. Again, in the fight against military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s, members of our tradition were very prominent. For instance, the People\u2019s Movement of Freedom and Justice, which fought against the institution of Acheampong\u2019s Union Government concept, was led, principally, by members of our tradition.<\/p>\n
Our history has been a consistent and principled struggle against tyranny. Our history has been a consistent and principled promotion and protection of multi-party democracy, rule of law, individual liberty, human rights, free enterprise and democratic accountability. In 1992, the New Patriotic Party, built from the ashes of the UGCC, GCP, NPP, UP, PP, PFP and UNC, restated its principle that freedom is the primary end, as well as the means to development, with the wellbeing of each and every individual as both the goal and means of development.<\/p>\n
The philosophy of the NPP has been adopted by our Fourth Republican Constitution and it is what is dominant in the world today. It has stood the test of time, as compared to a one party state, dictatorship, the absence of rule of law, state socialism, and state ownership.<\/p>\n
The NPP views civil liberties and human rights as conducive to economic growth and intrinsic to the objective of development. We believe in empowering the individual to use his or her entrepreneurial initiative to create legitimate wealth and to enjoy security of person and private property. We believe through freedom, we can encourage upward mobility for everyone in society. Accordingly, the party chose as its motto, \u2018Development in Freedom\u2019.<\/p>\n
The NPP\u2019s motto is built on an unyielding belief that political and social freedoms are both inherently desirable. Thus, individuals are not free if they are hungry, illiterate, ignorant, homeless and in squalor. Our overriding desire is to enhance the dignity of the Ghanaian. This has been the ideological driving force that has kept the Danquah-Dombo-Busia family going for more than sixty years. The three fundamental values of the party are freedom, fairness and fraternity.<\/p>\n
The philosophy and programmes of the NPP remain the most formidable proposition in the political market of our country. In the eyes of the great man, Joseph Boakye Danquah, a property-owning democracy for a free, independent Ghana could never mean luxury for the elite at the expense of the poor. When Danquah advanced the concept of a property-owning democracy for Ghana as the bedrock of the United Party\u2019s national vision, he was not advocating luxury for an elite class. He was rather extending the notion of individual ownership to the majority.<\/p>\n
He was preaching what you might call the democratisation of property \u2013 teaching the majority not only to aspire to fulfilment, but granting them access to the ladder of vertical mobility. We believe in giving the citizens of our country a hand-up and not handouts \u2013 a hand-up to develop and to use their God-given talents to enhance human dignity and contribute to the development of society; hence, Danquah\u2019s insistence that the purpose of governmental action should be to enhance \u201cthe life, liberty and property of each and every citizen\u201d.<\/p>\n
The idea of a property-owning democracy is a positive one, even where the majority are poor and where land tenure rules have lost some of their coherence; for what we need is a political economy that serves as a strong bridge from the era of turning to big government as the all-purpose problem solver, to an era when people are entrusted with self governance.<\/p>\n
The most important property that society can bequeath to its citizens is intellectual property. As Africa\u2019s 20th century history has shown, a nation may be endowed with all the riches of nature \u2014 gold, diamond, bauxite, oil, platinum, timber, manganese and uranium \u2014 and still remain poor. The most important resource that we have to prioritise in building is the human resource \u2013 the mind.<\/p>\n
That is why I have made education, education, education, my first priority. The best legacy that a parent can give a child is education. The programme for the next NPP government will be to make Senior High School the first exit point for education in Ghana. The situation where some 180,000 or more school leavers are thrown onto the streets every year without any employable basic skills must stop.<\/p>\n
It is too dangerous for Ghana\u2019s security. We cannot continue building a future of hopelessness for our youth. To do so the next NPP government will focus on quality education. Our education policy will therefore put the teacher first.<\/p>\n
We have to offer real hope for the youth of this country. They need education, skills and jobs. It is our task to device programmes that can offer them just that. If we can build the intellectual property of the Ghanaian, offer the best of public services and create an environment that promotes private enterprise, we will surely free up the Ghanaian to climb the ladder of prosperity and enhance the dignity of our people. We need to focus not only on sharing the cake, but on how to expand the grain fields, so we can grow more, mill more flour to bake more and more cake (and other pastries) for everyone to enjoy. That is what we stand for and that is what we are fighting for and, by the grace of God, we shall succeed.<\/p>\n
Ours is to democratise access to wealth. Our philosophy is to build a society that has the capacity to allow its citizens to create and spread wealth in freedom and with responsibility.<\/p>\n
Thus, a property owning democracy aims to empower economically the lesser well off, not by taking from those who already have but by dispersing ownership of property as widely as possible through the creation of more wealth by giving more and more people the opportunities to participate across generations in the shortest possible time, protected by the rule of law and respect for human rights. The NPP does not envisage a society eternally divided between owners and non-owners of capital, but one which aspires to make everyone a shareholder of the society\u2019s wealth.<\/p>\n
The NPP seeks to create a political economy consistent with basic individual liberties; provide substantially equal opportunities to all citizens; tackle inequalities, but not by a centralised state socialism, but by a private sector led economy that is allowed to create wealth, and the tax revenues that the state can accrue from such free entrepreneurships shall be then invested in the social sectors to create greater opportunities for the lesser well offs.<\/p>\n
These are excerpts from \u2018THE NPP STORY AND OUR VISION FOR 2012\u2019, A SPEECH DELIVERED BY NANA AKUFO-ADDO, 2012 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, AT A SEMINAR FOR PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES, SPOKESPERSONS AND NATIONAL EXECUTIVES, 23RD MAY, 2011, ALISA HOTEL, NORTH RIDGE, ACCRA<\/p>\n
By Nana Akufo-Addo<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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We trace our roots to that fateful Saturday, August 4, 1947, at Saltpond, when great nationalists of the time, George Alfred \u2018Paa\u2019 Grant, J B Danquah, Francis Awoonor-Williams, R S Blay, George More, R S Wood, J W de Graft Johnson, Ebenezer Ako Adjei William Ofori-Atta, Edward Akufo-Addo, and Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey, gathered to inaugurate the United Gold Coast Convention, the first truly nationalist party of the Gold Coast, at a gathering which included paramount chiefs, clergymen, lawyers, entrepreneurs, teachers, traders and \u201cmen and women from all walks of life in the Gold Coast\u201d, according to an eye witness. 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