Politics of Thursday, 14 June 2018
Source: Graphic.com.gh
2018-06-14
Professor Delle, National Chairman, CPP
The Chairman of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Professor Edmund Delle, has served notice that the lot of Ghanaians will continue to get worse unless they change their voting pattern.
He has, therefore, called on Ghanaians to make a conscious decision to break ties with the two major political parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
According to him, throughout his travels across the entire country, he has met with Ghanaians from all walks of life, especially those in remote and rural areas and has been inspired by their unwavering belief and commitment to democracy, freedom, rule of law and unity.
“But I also find in them a people disappointed and disillusioned; a people tired of political rhetoric that is not matched with reality; a people disenchanted with the state of our nation; a people fed up with a healthcare system that causes a 70-year- old man to lose his life because no hospital will give him a bed; a people tired of political robbery with impunity; a people unsatisfied with free education but no jobs; a people unaccepting of the growing inequality, and the widening gap between the rich and the poor; a people frankly fed up with the two major political parties who have failed us spectacularly,” he enumerated.
CPP @ 69
Addressing a press conference to formally mark the 69th anniversary of the formation of the CPP at the party’s headquarters in Accra yesterday, Prof. Delle maintained that the country currently finds itself in an abyss, with no clear moral compass guiding it out of “the labyrinth of graft and corruption.”
Throwing more light on the theme for the celebration “rekindling the spirit of unity and forbearance for a rejuvenated CPP,” Prof. Delle said at the nation’s fork road of despair and a yearning for hope, there had never been a greater validation of the ideals upon which the CPP was founded.
“There has never been a greater moment in our history where the need for a third party, where the need for an alternative to the two party system of entrenched corruption and failed leadership, where the need for a restoration of our dignity, of our values, of our purpose, has shined so brilliantly as hope illuminating the darkness of our despair,” he stressed.
Professor Delle, therefore, used the occasion of the 69th anniversary of the party as a call to another action of liberation as was the case in the struggle for independence.
He said, “I call on all Nkrumaists to unite for a new challenge to liberate Ghana once again, this time, not from foreign rule but from the shackles of corruption and failed leadership.”
A new leadership required
Describing the struggle as a collective effort, he underscored the need to guard against threats of division which constituted a clear and present threat to the desire and destiny to deliver a new type of leadership to the country.
He advised all to place the supreme interest of the party far and above any individual or group interest and that as leaders, “we must always remember that we are servants of the party and servants of our nation.”
The CPP, he said, was without doubt the answer to the call by the people of Ghana for change and a party that was tied to the people of Ghana and their aspiration for a better and more promising life.
“The CPP must continue to be the vanguard for the realisation of the collective dreams of our people. It is our duty, as a party of national liberation, to rise up to this time, to this unique moment in our history to capture political power and restore Ghana’s greatness,” he exhorted.
Attempts to belittle Nkrumah’s achievements
It was Prof. Delle’s submission that 61 years after the founder of the CPP, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, led the country into victory as an independent nation with the right to determine its own destiny, the challenge of living up to his vision and expectations remained defiantly ever so.
But he added quickly that the party contended with an assault on national history and truth and a revisionist attempt to rewrite the nation’s history and rob its youth of the knowledge of the achievements of Nkrumah.
“But our detractors are misguided inasmuch as they are mischievous. Because the greatness of Nkrumah lies not in his history, in our history, but in our future; because Nkrumah inspires us to build a party and a country to transform us from the nadir of hopelessness into the shining Black Star of Africa because Nkrumah compels us to unite together as Africans to transform our continent because our manifest destiny is inextricably linked together,” he maintained.