`Cool Chop` For Mills

When delegates meet on December 21, 2007 at Legon to pick the flagbearer for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in their 2008 electoral bid, the choice will be obvious, in spite of the spirited campaigns put up by all three opponents of Professor John Evans Atta Mills, particularly the `desperate`, hard-punching Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, the candidate largely representing the voice of change in the NDC. The choice will be obvious because of the fact of Prof. Mills` strength on the ground by virtue of his known name and face; his stint as a former Vice-President and his singular sense of decency as a politician, which makes even anti-Rawlings media people think twice before atempting to `attack` him.

An electoral surprise from Spio or any other candidate in this regard will therefore be an unthinkable miracle just like what most Ghanaians thought of the possibility of Dr. Ackah Blay-Miezah winning the 1979 elections and forming a government; though Spio would still have sounded the message loud and clear to NDC conservatives that the days of arbitrariness in the NDC are over. He also would have hinted that it was time for yesterday politicians in the NDC carrying the baggage of arbitrary political tendencies to wise up and give way to moderates who are better-advantaged to tap the huge quantum of floating votes in the electoral system for the benefit of the NDC in their 2008 bid.

The call on the part of moderates for the party to operate as a modern, democratic institution, rather than the quasi-military political entity notorious for overthrowing a constitutionally-elected government, and for which its leadership have constantly and consistently been under fire from anti-Rawlings journalists, has been unending.

Silent protests and dissenting voices calling for more and deeper tolerance from party leadership have resulted in the Goosie Tannor-led rebellion culminating in the formation of the Reform Party on the eve of Election 2000; and the Obed Asamoah-led split that birthed the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), which is now making huge waves country-wide, and gradually dragging the parent NDC down the pits of political inertia.

But NDC watchers speculate that the NDC's arbitrary spirit which led to the formation of Goosie`s Reform Party or Obed`s DFP will not be the final nail in the coffin of Ghana`s political monolith born, bred, sustained and drawn along like a locomotive by the cancerous dictates of one man and his household, instead of a collective, enduring, transparent, time-tested, modern political frame-work designed to nurture and grow a party.

Internal democracy has, however, improved even if it has been at the expense of people's lives and defections, since the day Rawlings single-handedly anointed Professor Evans Atta Mills as his successor in the infamous Swedru Declaration. The ill-fated Koforidua Congress and resignations by Obed, Bede, Frances Assiam, Kwaku Baah, Nii Okaidja Adamafio and others; the fearless and open challenge to Mills candidacy by moderates like Spio and cadres like Alhaji Iddrisu Mahama as well as the `retreating` games of former stalwarts like Joshua Alabi, cadre chief Yaw Akrasi Sarpong, moderate former Minister for Health Nuamah Donkor, Mike Gizo, Josiah Aryeh and George Quaynor Mettle, all tell tales of the inevitable decapitation of a once almost impregnable political entity, in spite of the occasional ugly noises from Wahala marchers and the singular charisma of a dictator obsessed with the vain-glory of a defeated Napoleon demanding that he still be called Emperror even whilst he was in prison in exile. These hiccups are aside of the tummy-rumbling saga of more than 25 MPs with one leg in Parliament and the other in the DFP.

For once, Mr.Rawlings is expected to lie low and allow General Mosquito, as General Secretary of the NDC and therefore the man in charge of operations, to conduct the Congress. A freer, less intimidating atmosphere will be engendered, and delegates will vote from the very depths of their hearts rather than the dictates and intimidation or a creeping fear of taskmaster Rawlings.

Mills, certainly, is destined to become the flagbearer of the NDC for the third time in the history of the party; but unfortunately for the peace-loving politician, the ferment will continue, with more openly quitting and joining the DFP, and the rest quietly joining the band of quiet backsliders like former Mayor Nat Nunoo-Amarteifio, brought in by the NDC from the US to head the chronically rot-riddled AMA.