Things don’t just happen; I believe they do happen for a reason(s) in this World we live in. I therefore have little obscurity in accepting our defeat in the general elections. The reasons are of two folds, the opportunity;
1. To restructure our party
2. To learn from our past in order to forge ahead in greater unity in diversity.

I write this piece as a (former) party activist on KNUST campus and a TESCON member who shares the discontentment in sincerity of the many unrewarded youth of our party across the nation. I understand your bitterness and hopelessness but I urge you not to feel despondent. I say this because many like the two time TESCON President of UCEW-K Campus who resigned from the party or have joined the popular floating voters’ party of Ghana or crossed to another party are affecting us adversely.

We should be concerned and make concerted efforts in wooing them back into our folds. I was very sad when a youth meeting I attended recently consisting mainly of former students leaders and party activists began and ended with lamentations and frustrations of being a youth in Danqua-Busia-Domo tradition. I left the place more perturbed and with less hope than I got in.

On campuses one will not see sons and daughters of the big party men and women joining us in campaigning or in outreach programs on campus or in Constituencies. The party at all vital levels is supported by these same grass roots members and their family members. All ministers and members of parliament on our party’s ticket should be ashamed of only interested in using us with no or less reward and recognition. I do not want to mention names but anybody can challenge me and I will call the names especially from KNUST campus; very few of them joined TESCON.


These lamentations and others are from sincere hearts with genuine quest for a listener who will appreciate them and show honest commitment to help effect fundamental change in the way we do things in the party. My experience during a campaign tour in Offinso North Constituency with a Polling Station Chairman portrayed a dying sense of ownership of the party at the grass root. Many of these men and women who had toiled for this party are feeling greater alienation from the party they have built with their sweat but has been hijacked by educated elites whose English they seldom comprehend. The ramifications of course are severe for the future of the party Ghanaians love and feel proud to belong to.

The basic structure of our party is the Polling Station Unit but the constituents at this level have little or no influence in who becomes the Parliamentary Candidate, National Executives and more importantly the Flag-bearer. In creating a reformed NPP by enhancing the belief and sense of ownership by the grass root members, we should expand the Polling Station structure through the election of more executives in assisting roles. These executives should be granted the power and privilege to elect their own constituency, regional and national executives as well as parliamentary candidate and flag bearer.

This cures two vicious defects we have being suffering from; creeping sense of alienation by grass root members and small Electoral College size that are easily influenced by prospective candidates.

For instance, a Constituency with 75 Polling Stations will have 750 Polling station delegates plus 10 Constituency delegates. With this, it will be practically expensive and difficult to bribe your way through even at the parliamentary primaries let alone at the national primaries. Elections at national levels can take place at selected or designated voting centers across every constituency simultaneously. I believe that these delegates will feel very proud to pay for their own transportation to cast their ballots. There should be strict measures in place to avoid busing to and fro. Conservatively, a candidate will need more than 106,800 votes to become the National Chairman or flag bearer of our party.

In my humble opinion, the dividend of us losing power is to restructure the party with a mission of re-installing a sense of ownership and belonging to the party, leaders becoming less selfish and greedy, showing exemplary modesty and humility, leading by open door policy where the grass root member whose desire is just to have the big man respond to his calls is rather showed disrespect through ignorance even when he calls more than ten times is avoided, and many more acts that face us everyday even in opposition. We must also make the youth play central roles in the party in both decision making and implementation while commitment is shown that reward will be theirs through recognition and more empowerment.

I therefore endorse the proposal by some leading members of the party to create the Youth and Women wings with different structures and set of executives or leaders. The delegates should therefore eschew any selfish tendencies by voting massively for that proposal. Then, the onerous will lie on the delegates to the Youth and Women Congress in identifying good executives who will offer effective and efficient leadership.

Another critical destruction button being pressed by some members is the unnecessary criticisms of the person of Mr. Kufuor, incidentally the only president the party has produced in its contemporary phase whose administration has delivered many monumental social assets in the country. The undeniable fact is that Mr. Kufuor is admired by many globally and is a political asset.

I had the opportunity to read Mustapha Hamid’s thoughtless piece in The Insight paper which is not different from similar effusions by Arthur Kennedy, Osafo-Maafo, Dan Botwe and others making the rounds. I heard a rumor that a party man confronted or accosted the former president in a public place and nearly insulted him for not doing enough for Nana Addo to win the presidential election. We destroyed ourselves during the 2008 elections campaign and we seem not satisfied but continuing same acts even after losing power we should not have lost.

I only invite such people in our party to go back and check the composition of all Regional Campaign Teams not the one-sided National Campaign Committee. The deliberate attempt by some members who thought it was time to compensate Mr. Kufuor for his “actions” or “inactions” against them by making him unimportant in a party that made him president. I was surprised that Hamid did not see that as a wrong judgment. This same Hamid man had the enviable opportunity as the Spokesperson of Nana Addo and was on Peace FM to debate NDC during the second run campaign; his pointer for about five minutes was to tell voters that Prof. Mills is a “born-loser” hence should not be voted for. He could not tell voters how dishonest and uninspiring candidate Mills and his men were; that he should know was also a wrong judgment. I once told him that his desire then to become the General Secretary was as a wrong judgment as Arthur Kennedy running for flag bearer in NPP in 2008.

The sycophantic nature of Hamid’s piece was so obvious that he did not identify a single criticism or misjudgment on the part of the man he purportedly spoke for or on behalf for many occasions. I should assume that it will be his next article to judge his political mentor. He should reflect on the style of the campaign carried out by people like him, Gabby, Apraku, Nich and Commey etc and juxtapose it to the political environment within that period. The campaign team refused to adopt our only active network of polling station executives as the major campaign messages dissemination model; they rather preferred expensive celebrity endorsement which is highly ineffective in our part of the world. I hope that may be part of your wrong judgments that eventually caused us the victory which you are hallucinating about.

I stand for greater unity because it is the only way forward but my desire will not be enough if others like Hamid and his likes do not stop such destructive tendencies. I hope he is not behind some of the inimical text messages doing the rounds about the former president. I will also recommend that Mr. Hamid finds time to spend in the countryside to have a chat with the foot soldiers i.e. Polling Station Executives and seek their opinion about some of the misjudgments during our government era and the campaign; they will tell him the truth in honesty.

Another unhealthy manipulation some members are doing in the party is the deliberate attempt to pack Radio programs with people who are pro Nana Addo. I have learnt that it is part of their scheme to weaken other potential contestants. Party big men have taken some people off some popular Radio programs because they perceive them not as pro Nana Addo. My concern is not so much about the seemingly one-sided selection of panelists to represent the party but the obvious puny minded and sometime unconvincing arguments by some of these men on air that seem to further weaken the party. We are by this action losing the opportunity to change the face and voice of the party in the public. I am not suggesting that these men should not be used in the party but their energies can well be channeled in different areas to positively support the same party. The interesting phenomenon is that some of these men and women are brilliant but many a Ghanaian is fed up with their voices and faces hence will never be convinced by their arguments nevertheless.

Some of these machinations being undertaken by some members are certainly ridiculous. These are the same people who claimed the unmatched popularity of Nana Addo in the country hence the issues of a running mate was immaterial. Now they are suggesting that we endorse NANA-ALAN ticket. I sincerely believe it is not from a good heart and should not engage the attention of the party grass root members.

In order to win the 2012 general elections from opposition, we need to adapt entirely new and innovative ideas that meet the aspirations of our compatriots across the country. We must set in motion processes of effecting desirable and relevant changes in the way we do things that can transcend generations unborn. There is no question about the urgent need for re-branding of our party.

We can and I am convinced that we should learn from the Republican Party in the United States and the relevant changes going on in that party. To quote their new National Chairman Gov. Michael Steele “We have been mis-defined as a party that doesn’t care a party that’s insensitive, a party that is unconcerned about minorities, a party that is unconcerned about the lives and the expectations and dreams of average Americans”. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” That is the task that faces us which we need to confront collectively and concertedly on time.”

We lost in many swing Constituencies which presupposes that either our Candidate does not appeal to “floating” voters or other minority party members were too persuaded by the numerous NDC propaganda or we ran a superfluous campaign as a party. I will not rule out the effect of our dear party being defined wrongly by our opponents which due to selfish tendencies we could not battle mainly because some were tagged pro-Kufuor whose energies and capabilities were thrown into the trash bin. The truth is also that some leading members of the Campaign team reinforced this wrong definition by our opponent through their outlook. I witnessed the KNUST Energy Forum and similar encounters during the campaign and I was amazed at the sheer exhibition of bourgeois life style by some members. A party Executive did not take it kindly when he was taken to the most expensive Hotel in Kumasi to meet one of the Campaign Executives. The man could not understand why you will be running a campaign in a developing country and be sleeping in such an utmost luxury Hotel. He was most annoyed that his budget was cut by about 50% by the same man for inadequate campaign funds, isn’t it ironic?

My analysis of the election results revealed such constituencies across Ashanti, Eastern, Brong Ahafo, Western, Greater Accra, Central, Northern and Upper East. In many of these Constituencies which we do not win usually the rate of decrease in our votes were so alarming and significant. The intriguing aspect in some of these Constituencies was that NDC was able to capture all the marginal votes as well as some of the votes we had in the first run. It was also instructive to note that, even in Ashanti, Eastern and Brong Ahafo Regions NDC was able to increase its marginal votes more significantly than us which suggest that our Candidate and the Campaign message could not cross the vital line to capture non-NPP voters. Most of these Constituencies have similar demographics in many relevant ways and also paid heed to our call for greater voter turnout.

We need to relate the report Dr. J. Heyman’s Committee will issue dispassionately to the figures and make objective inferences from them. This brings home the point about the effectiveness of the Party’s Research Committee at the Headquarters. Indeed the next Party chief must be a 21st century thinker and a dynamic manager not just an organizational expert because I guess we have organizational structure at all levels but what we lack is a dynamic and innovative manager as party chief.

It is interesting to hear from Mr. Mac Manu (Party Chief) that party members who take advantage of the media landscape to discredit others for the actions and inactions that seem to them as being responsible for our defeat will be punished. His point has been buttressed by Mr. Perry Okudzeto. I will like to remind them that I took opportunity of Article 4 Clauses 5 and 7 of the party’s Constitution on 6th February 2009 against Hon. P.C Appiah-Ofori to which no responds have been given. Their laissez-faire attitude towards issues raised by ordinary members like me offer ample motivation for the many effusions in the media.

I am urging all ordinary members of the party not to be perturbed and discouraged for he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another time. We can not fight for progress with bitterness in our hearts we should eschew it; we need to stay in the party and effect the right changes at all levels. This is the only party we have sacrificed so much for and can not allow the party to suffer premature demise. Let’s the youth come together and stand up to fight for unity, cohesion, equality, fairness, respect, solidarity and justice in the party for the future is ours.




Credit: SAMUEL NANA YAW ADUTWUM
[Email: Syllax2001@yahoo.co.uk]
PHONE NO.- 0244-523996