The power game currently going on in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is nothing but an embarrassment.
If the current contest for ownership of the party as is being carried out are truly driven by selflessness and an honest desire to serve the people as the jostlers often claim, the atmosphere would be reassuring. But this is not so. And they know it. The unbroken boisterous shout from one side to the effect that Alan Kwadwo Kyeremanten, must back down for Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to go unopposed in the National Delegates Congress slated for October 18, and the sometimes over-the-top counteractive defiance from Alan’s camp, is down to only one thing: elite self-interest.
It has to be emphasized that the enduring nonsense about the country’s presidency as an object of do-or-die tussle between the NPP and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), is an elite concept perpetuated by the privileged class in both party.
For them the essence of grabbing power has never been for the purpose of development and improvement of the lives of the people they seek to govern. It is to preserve elitism by furthering class distinction to the absolute disadvantage of the lower class. This perception is informed by not only the power struggle going on in the NPP, but the yet to resurface tension in the NDC.
If any member of the NDC is tickling themselves to laughter, because the NPP is in turmoil, then I have news flash for them, what is brewing in the NDC is hotter and is coming with it undesirable and unintended consequences.
Today, the NPP is shouting hoarse as though they care about the welfare and well-being of the ordinary Ghanaian, whose vote they seek. In my
short sojourn on earth and having been politically aware since 1994, I have come to the conclusion that politicians are a bunch of greedy and self-seeking bunch, who sees the opportunity to serve as an opportunity to pilfer our collective till.
We are today crying that things are not well, the economy is not in the best of shape, yet we have had the two dominant parties in power, they have all had a fair share of eight years of democratic governance, with NDC leading in the number of years, we had NDC one and now NDC two, which is still in motion.
The best group of politicians, I have seen in Ghana are the ones in opposition, they proffer the best and plausible solutions to the economic emancipation of the country, they talk as if they don’t come from among us, give them power and all they knew and propagated when they were in opposition is thrown into the dustbin.
The NPP is not better than the NDC, if anything at all it is that one is a lesser evil and I think the NDC is the better of the two. The NPP, whiles in office between 2000-2008, insulted Ghanaians, even when we were crying that things are not well, we were told to go and eat mangoes and cassava, if we feel the economy is bad.
The desperation and frustration in the pronouncement from members of the NPP clearly show a hungry bunch of people, who see nothing happening to them except they are in power.
We have heard the battle cries of is either we win or the country burns, I do not know and don’t wish Dr. Afari Gyan to be the Chairman of the Electoral Commission, come election 2016. He has been demonized and called unpatriotic, but he is the most patriotic Ghanaian I have come across in my life. Anytime power changes hand, the victors see him as a fair umpire, while the vanquish see him as a betrayer of democracy.
We have a saying that if you do not know death, watch sleep, what we are to expect in 2016, is what we are witnessing in the NPP, between Alan and Nana Addo. This is a curtain raiser to the main event and already we are told that it is either Nana Addo becomes the President or we all die.
It is a foregone conclusion though that Nana Addo will win the primaries of the party to go on and represent the NPP, in the next 2016 polls, so what is the apprehension about?
Virtually all the regional and Constituency executives have all pledged their support to Nana Addo, Alan Kyeremanten is a loner in the party, his popularity and support has been dwindling since he declared his intention in 2007 to lead the NPP, 2010 National delegates Congress was no different.
In my last epistle, I asked that common sense should inform Alan in his next journey towards leading the party, he should have known that the same selfishness that is informing his decisions even against all available evidence that he was not going to win, is the same selfishness that is informing the decision of the delegates, and that is, they put their interest above the interest of the NPP and Ghana, this has been the bane of the NPP.
Without not getting ahead of myself, I can comfortably say that even the whole country constitute the delegates, who will be voting to determine who leads the NPP, Nana Addo will any day beat Alan Kwawdo Kyeremanten.
Nana Addo knows this and so is his followers, but the question I struggle to get answers to is, what at all is it that is pushing them to run over anybody, who dares to question the capacity of Nana Addo?