Elephants killing elephants?
There is a popular saying that when two elephants fight it is the grass which suffers. But I have yet to hear from anyone about what happens when elephants kill themselves.
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I’m not an expert on animals, but I think common sense would tell me that for animal species, when the members of the same group start killing themselves, they would be doing nothing than causing the extinction of themselves.
Going by this logic, I am very shocked that the elephant’s party in Ghana has closed its eyes for its members to kill themselves.
Once upon a time, 17 good candidates of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) paraded themselves in a bitter and fierce contest for the party’s presidential candidate position. In the aftermath of that hot, bitter and very acrimonious campaign in what the military would term “blue on blue”, it really took hard work before some wounds were healed, with many of them still being treated.
As if the NPP did not learn anything from the deep scars left by that fratricidal and internecine war which was fought by candidates, which dearly caused it much tension and agitation, the NPP seems to be moving in the same direction again.
In the past, candidates vying for internal positions and those vying for the presidential candidate slot, in particular, washed one another’s dirty linen in public to the extent that after their fight, they graciously handed their opponents good campaign and propaganda materials enough to kill them in no time.
Today, the NPP is holding elections in all the regions for the party’s regional executives. Prior to this, the candidates had repeated what candidates in previous elections had done; they had insulted themselves and already weakened the credibility of most of the candidates. One wonders what would happen after today when new executives would have been elected, but had their credibility tainted by their own fellow party members.
The current messy situation is clearly centred on the now obvious factions in the party, two of which have become so destructive against themselves – the Nana Addo and Alan factions.
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One would argue that factions and internal struggle are always part of political organisation and within almost all political parties. However, if the acrimony gets to the extent where the party members become the ones to destroy the party, it becomes worrisome.
So far, apart from Dr Kofi Konadu Apraku, who has made his plans and intensions clear that he wants to contest for the party’s presidential candidate position, no one has pulled his or her neck completely out, apart from a few surrogates throwing in a few hints here and there.
From the NPP’s own camp, different allegations have been levelled against most of the possible candidates for the presidential candidate slot.
Against, Nana Akufo Addo, the allegation is that he is not a winnable candidate because he had tried twice without success and also led the party to shrink its parliamentary seats. According to some members from the other camps, it was under Akufo Addo’s leadership as the presidential candidate that the party lost most of its safe parliamentary seats.
While candidate John Agyekum Kufuor gave the party some representation from the Volta and all the three northern regions in Parliament, candidate Akufo Addo caused the loss of the Volta seat, as well as majority of the northern seats. Akufo Addo is also blamed for reducing the overall votes of the party in both the presidential and parliamentary elections, compared to what Kufuor achieved for the party.
Accusations against Alan Kyerematen are even worse. His biggest headache is his resignation in April, 2008 from the NPP. Many NPP members have not forgiven him for abandoning the party when he heavily enjoyed when the party was in government, including holding a ministerial position.
To many NPP members, Alan Kyerematen cannot be taken seriously because he has proved to be selfish and thinking only about himself and positions he wants to occupy without any toil and sacrifice. According to them, he abandoned the party at a time everybody’s support was crucially and badly needed.
In the case of Akufo Addo, one could undertake a research to establish whether the loss of parliamentary seats and the overall reduction in the party’s vote nationwide was caused by his unpopularity or the dysfunction and malfunctioning of the party executives as far as putting a good campaign and electoral machine in the process for the last two elections.
A good and popular candidate could lose an election if the campaign message was not too good and the campaign was not properly planned and organised. So Akufo Addo may not be wholly blameable for NPP’s woes in the last two elections.
His other problem with some members is his age. Some feel he is too old to still go into a presidential contest, so he needs to retire after enjoying two opportunities.
For Alan Kyerematen, his resignation issue stares strongly at him. Why did he resign when he failed to win a contest to be the party’s presidential candidate? Why has he not formally and properly apologised to the rank and file of the party for abandoning them? Why does he still want the party to offer him the opportunity to lead it when it abandoned it when he was needed?
Dr Apraku did not make a good show in the last contest. Some NPP members at that time thought he had not marketed himself properly before he went into that contest. Since then, he has occupied ministerial positions. He hasn’t got over those serious allegations against himself apart from the fact that he was the campaign manager for Nana Akufo Addo in the last election; hence, if Nana Addo did not perform, then his campaign was not good.
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Isaac Osei and Prof. Frimpong Boateng are likely to join the fight, thus gradually taking the party to its previous position of parading 17 candidates who destroyed themselves and the party, long before the real fight began.
Factions in a party by itself might not be bad in a democracy. Rather, the worrying aspect to anyone who desires to see our democracy grow is that members of the various factions in the past destroyed the candidates before they had progressed to the national level. Sadly, this is going on again, all in the name of this faction and that faction, yet the national executive has not done anything.
Is it not sad that the party’s sitting parliamentarians could describe the party executive members as thieves and still nothing happens? Is NPP not giving ammunition to its opponents and with which the party could be crashed in another election? Well, let’s see if this war between the factions would stop after today’s election of the party’s regional executives.
The writer is a journalist and political scientist. He is the Head of the Department of Media and Communication Studies, Pentecost University College, Accra.
Writer’s e-mail : fasado@hotmail.com
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