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When the cadres of the then ruling Provisional National Defense Council(PNDC) took the decision to form a political party in 1990/1991, they did so based on serious scientific grounding.
They knew they were going to come up against the two formidable traditional political parties- the Convention Peoples Party(CPP) and the United Party(UP).
The cadres also knew they were novices so far as competitive politics was concerned.
The third (and probably) most important thing they knew was that they( the cadres ) could not win any multiparty contest alone. There was, therefore, the need to identify other natural allies with whom to unite.
At that stage, the future leader of the yet-to-be inaugurated party and also the head of state, Jerry John Rawlings, in a controversial speech, admonished the cadres that they could not be kingmakers and kings at the same time. He was talking about the desire of many cadres to be parliamentarians. That, they should create enough room for outsiders to join the party.
Today, if the CPP is small and non- formidable, it is because most of its old members, especially the Young Pioneers of the 1960s are all with the NDC. Former President John Dramani Mahama(his father was a minister under Dr. Kwame Nkrumah) was most likely to be with the CPP instead of being the leader of the NDC today. Those members of the CPP who for one reason or another could not directly join the new party went into an alliance with the NDC after breaking away from their mother party. They included the likes of Tetteygah(an astute trade unionist under Nkrumah) , Professor Kofi Awoonor, Vice President Kow Nkensen Arkaah, etc, who came together to form the National Convention Party(NCP). Other CPP members, including Sheik Ibrahim Amartey, joined the EGLE party, etc.
On the front of the United Party( also called the Danquah-Busia Tradition), serious targeted poaching was done by the NDC leadership. From the traditional UP( now NPP) region of Brong Ahafo, two dominant lawyers and colossus members of the UP, Ambassador A A Munufie and J H Owusu Acheampong ended up in the NDC camp. From the Ashanti and Eastern regions came lawyer Kwaku Baah and many others. One notable figure, Justice DF Annan, who had earlier been appointed as a member of the PNDC, refused to jump ship but stuck to the NDC and later became the first speaker of parliament in the 4th Republic(l thought until his appointment he was nonpartisan but was later told he was a Busia-Danquahist but this l cannot vouch for)
I have taken considerable time and space to go through all the above to show that the NDC is an amalgamation of many parties including the NPP. This is the reason why a former NDC General Secretary, Vincent Assiseh described the party as an election machine. Apart from the cadre corps( today, they find themselves sidelined and marginalized by the very people they poached and made kings) made up of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution(CDRs), the 31st December Women’s Movement(DWM), the June Four Movement( JFM), the Civil Defense Organization(CDO) and other progressive organizations, the mass of the NDC members came from somewhere.
When President J A Kufuor won the elections in the year 2000, do you remember the number of people who defected from the NDC to join the NPP? Remember the onetime mayor of Kumasi, Nana Akwasi Agyeman who was a close pal of Jerry Rawlings? He changed coats from NDC to NPP when Kufuor won power in 2000? One also recalls a deputy minister for trade from 1996 to 2000 by the name Pepera. He immediately left the NDC to join the NPP when NDC lost power in 2,000. His explanation was that he joined the NDC to protect his family business. Later he became an MP on the ticket of the NPP in one of the Kwahu constituencies. Do you also recall the fanfare that greeted one Alhaji lnusah who was touted as one of President Kufuor’s right-hand men? Immediately he announced his defection to the NDC, he was offered an SUV and a contract of one billion Ghana cedis. Unfortunately, he died a few months later.
I am putting these pieces together to demonstrate to the NDC youths that competitive politics is played by numbers. That the essence of political party campaigns is to attract nonmembers of your party to yours.
The NDC youths who are being used to divide the front of the party by running down certain individuals should stop what they are doing because they are shattering the party’s chances in 2024.
I will come with part two so stay tuned because the NDC must not fall for the trap.
(by Eric Bortey, a journalist formerly with the GBC and NCCE)
Wednesday, December 15, 2021.
