Abura Epistle: Flag-bearer emeritus for peace in the NPP!
Once a while, a columnist may plan to veer away from the issues of the day and write something he is certain will survive the everyday concerns and become a more lasting testament to the drudgery of just writing for the sake of writing.
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Then boom, something comes up, a variation on a daily common theme in our present lives, and avoiding a comment is simply impossible.
One such topic I would have loved to avoid to rather discuss either the current World Cup competition in Brazil, the GUTA strike or even the fuel shortage is the unending crises in the largest minority party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), in recent times.
By the time you sit down to read this column on Friday, we would either have qualified out of the group stages and moved into the round of 16 to delirious national ecstasy, forgetting about the brouhaha over instability in the camp of the Black Stars, the problem of appearance fees, et cetera or we would have crashed out, further deepening the fissures of political discontent in the country. Writing about our chances before the fact is not a gamble I am brave enough to indulge in.
With the GUTA strike, I do not understand why Abossey Okai and Suame Magazine and other traders would go on strike to persuade our government to embark on a 2014 version of the Aliens Compliance Order of 1970 for two reasons:
All the foreigners in the trade have Ghanaian partners, frontmen and women who are well known to their colleagues in the business. Secondly, stabilising the dollar to permit their import business to go on is itself an attack on the stability of our cedi, seeing that these traders only import and sell foreign products, producing nothing local.
For the life of me, it is hard to comprehend private businessmen and women going on strike to endanger their financial arrangements with their bankers and creditors dependent on daily sales, apart from the sin of idleness that these fiercely independent citizens frown on.
The current fuel shortage is made worse by events in Iraq that we have absolutely no control over. The problem it is has coincided with the periodic quarrel between the government and bulk suppliers which, without the Iraq angle, would have been sorted out by now. Any comment from this corner, even though relative to internal politics, would be futile.
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Which takes us ineluctably to the continuing virtual state of siege in the NPP. Just as my brother, Boakye Agyarko, was preaching a form of consensus based on across the board realisation of the inevitability of Nana Akufo Addo securing the 2016 presidential nomination on Monday in this very newspaper, a violent scuffle broke out right in the hallowed precincts of the NPP headquarters over the simple and straightforward issue of changing guards.
Earlier at the weekend, the Northern Regional Chairman of the party, the famous contractor, Bugri Naabu, took the newly elected national chairman and general secretary to the cleaners for acting as the poodles for the Chief of Staff in President Kufuor’s government, Mr Kwadwo Mpiani, in furtherance of an inchoate Agenda 2020 to deprive Nana Akufo-Addo of the 2016 nomination or damage him beyond any hope of victory in 2016.
Curiously enough, Bugri Naabu made the completely untenable argument that Paul Afoko was pursuing an anti-North agenda, that is, he was working against the vice-presidential ambitions of Dr Bawumia.
Whatever the variations on the ultimate question of who becomes the presidential candidate of the NPP for the 2016 elections, most of us are now thoroughly bewildered by the ever-growing nastiness, mindless viciousness and wanton violence being promoted in party ranks by supporters of leading members.
The NPP has become, by this inevitable progression, so insensitive to the outrageous conduct of its members that we should not be surprised if murder is perpetrated sooner than later. Cutlasses, knives and guns were wielded last Monday, resulting in injury to persons and damage to property. Is it not extremely surprising and disconcerting that not a single leading member of the party has come out to outrightly condemn the headquarters violence last Monday?
What are the immediate and remote causes of the current highly unstable state of the biggest opposition party in this country? This is how we historians frame contentious issues. There are two reasons for this, one remote and the other immediate, and they are now feeding voraciously on each other, destroying all hope of party camaraderie, comradeship and fellow feeling.
In my humble opinion, the rule that presidential candidates should be elected not less than two years to the next election if the party is in opposition is the remote cause of all this.
This rule ensures that the party is always in a contentious jostling mood even as it gives the unfortunate impression that it has no patience to allow the ruling party to work and will continuously snipe at the heels of officialdom as if national elections were just around the corner.
This rule also never allows newly elected executives time to settle down and implement effectively party reforms without being accused of supporting one aspirant or the other. In short, ambitious aspirants have always sought to have elected party executives who would be their ‘tro-tro’ drivers to use the colourful language of Bugri Naabu.
The proof of the link between favourably disposed national executive and the aspirant who backed them is found in the fact that all those who have won national elections in both the NDC and the NPP have had a favourable party executive complementing their efforts. President Kufuor backed Odoi-Sykes and Dan Botwe for Chairman and General Secretary respectively in 1998 and won in 2000.
The same with President Mills in 2008 when he backed Dr Kwabena Adjei and Asiedu-Nketia the previous year. It was the same even with the Issifu Ali and Akumfi Ameyaw Munufie of the NDC in 1992.
This remote cause feeds destructively on the immediate cause of the rumblings in the party; the ambition of Nana Akufo-Addo and his main rival, Alan Kyerematen, to be the candidate at all costs for the 2016 election.
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The rivalry between the two has completely destroyed any hope of a united party for the 2016 elections, inasmuch as both represent two irreconcilables in the party. But Nana Addo’s is the more serious, as he has no hope of winning the national election with a hostile national executive. Both should do the gentlemanly thing by abandoning their ambitions and giving their beloved party a chance not only in contesting national elections but in shaping the political will of Ghanaians as our constitution demands.