Lawyer Bright Akwetey, aspiring flagbearer of the Convention Peoples’ Party on Tuesday said the party required a dynamic and transformational leader to catapult it to its original status as the trailblazer of Ghana politics.
“The CPP is at the crossroads and needs clear decisive leadership to urgently transform it and delegates cannot look beyond Bright Akwetey, no! not at this crucial time.
“The bane of the CPP is the frequency of flirtatious shifts engaged in by the very people who constitute the core of its front but who have so easily fallen to the tantalising baits of its political opponents,” Mr Akwetey told the Ghana News Agency in an interview in Accra.
He said the party needed a flag bearer with unquestionable moral authority and competence to bring back home the Party’s brothers and sisters domiciled in other political divides that the CPP needed now.
Mr Akwetey explained that the party was again at the crossroads of electing a leader for the 2012 general elections. "The CPP cannot continue to do things the same old way; electing people who hardly make it count, Change is crucial”.
He said, "I have been provoked to act in liberation of the priceless heritage of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, watching the CPP, once the touchstone of political power in Ghana sink to such depths of virtual dormancy.
“It was in a similar fashion that Dr. Nkrumah acted to salvage the then Gold Coast from the colonialists,” he said.
A copy of an abridged profile of Mr Akwetey obtained by the GNA indicates that he is an ardent Nkrumaist, a Young Pioneer in the days of the Presidency of Osagyefo.
He was born on March 13, 1949 and served as the President of the Ghana United Nations Youth and Students Association (GUNSA) between 1974 and 1975
He was called to the Bar in 1977 after graduating from the University of Ghana with a Bachelor of Law degree (LLB) in 1975.
Mr Akwetey began his legal career with the Attorney General’s Department where due to the predominance of economic crimes which he observed were costing the nation untold sums of money, found himself saddled with the prosecution of such crimes at the Criminal Law Division.
That decision was based on the dual missions of cleaning up and helping recover money for the nation. He led high powered teams of investigators and crime officers to conduct investigations into various economic crimes and successfully prosecuted landmark criminal cases.
It was a decade of real patriotic practice (from 1982 to 1992) which culminated in the recovery of billions of cedis for the country.
Following his remarkable performance at the Attorney General’s Department, the Barrister was sent on secondment to the Republic of The Gambia as Senior Counsel for State Commissions of Enquiry.
Mr Akwetey also served as the President of International Youth and Students Movement for the United Nations (ISMUN) from 1983 to 98.
He finally retired from the A-G Department and indeed civil practice in October 1999. He once chaired the Legal Committee of Ga-Dangme Council from 1999 to 2007.
Lawyer Akwetey until recently was Chairman of the Legal Committee, Shadow Minister for Justice and Attorney General and lawyer for the CPP.
He is currently into private practice.
In 2008, a leading Sub regional magazine, West Africa International Magazine conferred on him a “Dr. Kwame Nkrumah Leadership Award,” for his “martyric” pursuit of the Nkrumiast cause.**
