Newspaper-tycoon-turned-politician Nana Kofi Coomson who had desired so much to tie his apron strings to the New Patriotic Party and its MP stake rather unsuccessfully, is planning to go independent when Party dictates frowns on the very step he is to take in only a couple of days time.
Coomson, publisher of CHRONICLE GROUP OF NEWSPAPERS is warming up on the blind side of a majority of Party big-wigs, and is said to have gone ahead with the printing of Tee Shirts, banners and posters showcasing him as the new CHRIST on a mission to rescue the people of the Effia-Kwesimintsim Constituency, from a supposed economic crisis, subjugation and a lack of development. According to Constituency Party insiders, Coomson who originally hails from Cape Coast but has lived at Effiakuma for a long length of his infant years, has support from an originally peeved team of NPP foot-soldiers, who, for some four years or so, were on the other side of the ship with the incumbent Joe Baidoe-Ansah.
His brush-up with the Party’s laid down structures, procedures, norms and conventions kick-started months ago, when he was judged to have used NPP letterheads with all protocols printed on to solicit for funds for his campaign. The law caught up with him then, when the eagle eyes of his eternal rival Honourable Baidoe-Ansah set on him, attracting and inviting the Police in that instance. As so much water rolled under the bridge, Nana Coomson was to receive the boot up his bum when Party capos at the headquarters in Accra decided he had done something really untoward, and so debarred him from contesting the MP slot on the wings of the Party. That decision must have come too late in the night, for the Publisher had had yet another eye on incumbent Frema Osei Pare’s Ayawaso West Wugon seat, where Coomson would have been President John Agyekum Kufuor and Nana Akufo Addo’s MP, granted that time was on his side to scale the bar to compete and in the process, end up a success. Established sources at Kwesimintsim, Apremdo, Effiakuma, Tanokrom and its environs say, he may not be a favourite with the electorate as he was with the Constituency executives, and so his campaign may not really take to flight that much, let alone give the NPP the jitters he loves to drill down their spines. A handful of skin-on-head Party faithful say, Coomson has managed to build a repertoire not too palatable with sitting MPs within the Sekondi-Takoradi constituencies, where he is judged to have directed his media’s focal lenses rather negatively on all the MPs dotted around, with some incessant array of vitriolic and below-the-belt attacks that used to make the opposition laugh until saliva drifted out of their mouths.
On one occasion Nana Coomson actually forsook the shadow for the substance, when he said he would not be comfortable living under a Nana Akufo Addo-led presidency. Eventually the very man he said he would not be comfortable living under won the Party’s presidential slot, and therefore placed Coomson in an awkward situation while desiring to be MP under him. That, indeed, appeared to dye-in-the-wool NPP stalwarts as, asking Satan for just too much.
It is believed that Coomson was never a darling of the caucus that sat at the Party’s Headquarters to pull the ladder from underneath his soles, and that they first and foremost must have had that pregnant statement in mind.
A hugely-successful media person, Nana Coomson has been an icon for many with his delectable adjectival flows when occasion demands. Unkind voices say he returned from Nigeria where he practised rather successfully with pretty nothing but has managed to climb the success ladder in journalism and the hotel industry with breath-taking gusto. In journalism his THE GHANAIAN CHRONICLE continues to be a favourite with the affluent in society as well as the middle class, and his hotel industry at Takoradi is many a journalists’ dream.
Close pals say Coomson nursed the dream to become an MP for the Effia-Kwesimintsim Constituency a little over a decade ago, when he formed the WESTERN SAILORS soccer club to win the young electorate over, as well as pay for VACATION CLASSES that saw a steady stream of student numbers filing. He footed all bills all by himself and with his bagful of pregnant planning on the verge of yielding results, Coomson is said to feel that the NPP has eased in his left palm and covered it with his very right, having stood by their side in the dungeons to fight tyranny all these years.
His answer to all these heartbreaks is, GOING INDEPENDENT. All efforts to get Mr Coomson to speak to the issue proved futile as at press time.
