As our front-page story reports, the ruling party is in crisis. It is a leadership crisis caused by a leadership paralysis. A crisis borne out of the lack of leadership skills of the President who happens to be the leader of the party. A crisis, not least, brought on by the decision of the President to play post-victory oblivion to the history, driving spirit and realities of the National Democratic Congress, the political vehicle that carried him to the Castle.
NDC may be suffering from the makings of a civil war but it would not guarantee victory to the NPP. We are happy, through our discussions with the campaign team of Nana Akufo-Addo that the NPP is not depending on NDC crisis as the springboard to victory. The NPP is doing what it needs to do to win and will consider anything else as a welcome bonus. Jake and his team are approaching election 2012 as if the NDC is a united front and would present its strongest candidate against Nana Addo.
The opposition party has no room for complacency and we are glad to see this as its strategy.
Today, the National Executive Committee of the NDC meets to decide on the date of the Congress. From all indications, nominations are likely to be opened by mid April, and the presidential primary held in the second week of July. You may ask, why the rush?
By this time last year, the NDC was looking at December 2011 to ‘endorse’ President Mills to carry on staggering his way to delivering on his promised Better Ghana agenda.
But, things have changed. The NDC wants to settle the flagbearership issue quickly and with a small electoral college. All earlier attempts to dissuade a challenge for the flagbearership have failed. They failed because of two things that often drive any political contest: ambition and hope. Ambition because in Mr and Mrs Rawlings you have a duo that is obsessed with power and are still active enough, knowledgeable enough, experienced enough, and relevant enough to their party to entertain romantic thoughts of reclaiming the presidency.
However, any such ambition needs fuel to go on. That fuel is hope. And, that hope can only be driven by two forces, one negative and the other positive. The negative force is that the Rawlingses believe that President Mills has done more than enough to pose a personal leadership threat and liability to the fortunes of the NDC in any future election. The positive force is fed by what the couple has been hearing from their own party people, who have been encouraging them to take back the party. Every indication is that a significant portion of the NDC is disappointed by the performance of Mills. That growing dissatisfaction is finding refuge in the formidable twin figure of the Rawlingses – the foundation and spirit of the NDC.
It is a serious issue for President Mills and his NDC. The Rawlings factor to galvanizing the grassroots of the NDC has been crucial, historically. Not even his meanest critic can dismiss the massive impact that former President Rawlings had in getting Mills elevated from the hard-shoulders of political obscurity and elected into the highest office of the land.
Rawlings has suffered for Mills, risking splits in the party in the past for handpicking Mills and feeling the huge weight of ungratefulness once Mills swore the oath of office. Mills may no longer be described as a Rawlings man but Rawlings and those who know are convinced that not being a lackey to Rawlings has not made Mills his own man.
President Mills ought to have known before turning fully against Rawlings that the founder of the party has both his good and bad sides. The good crowd pulling side helped Mills to win; once victory was secured, Mills could not garner the leadership skills to accommodate or deal with the bad side of Rawlings. This failure underlines the poor leadership skills of the NDC leader.
While we doubt whether President Mills has the skills to stop the brewing NDC civil war, we are happy to know that the NPP is not betting on NDC misfortunes.
While it is true that the next election will be more a referendum on the NDC than on the NPP, it is pleasing to know that the focus of the NPP is to present a more credible alternative to the NDC. Thus, even if the NDC recovers from its growing disunity, the NPP can still present a superior programme to deliver a brighter future for Ghana. So far, the evidence is clear that the NDC cannot do the job. Can Nana Addo do it?
That is the question for the NPP to provide the answer for the majority of Ghanaians.
