Kufuor to support Kyerematen?

There is a discomposing development in the heightening contest to select a presidential candidate for the New Patriotic Party in December. A posteriori, the feeling is that President Kufuor is on the verge of launching a blitzkrieg in support of Alan Kyerematen.

This is not new, however. Since he was sent to Washington in 2001, Alan himself was never shy to broadcast aloud that he was the President's anointed successor.

He would be modest enough today to admit that the perception, real or manipulated, has helped enhance his image as one of the top three candidates, if public opinions can be trusted. That is not to belittle his own efforts, especially since 2003, to build himself up. He deserves commendation not condemnation.

Nevertheless, President Kufuor would have a hard time trying to convince all the other candidates put together that schemes have not been put in place to favour one candidate.

This sonorous feeling among the other camps that the President is supporting one candidate is not helped by the fact that the people in the engine room of Alan"s presidential locomotive are viewed as people with strong links to the President, from his Secretary downwards.

Qanawu, in this column, is restraining himself from producing supporting evidence. The issue of immediacy is how best or willing the Presidency may wish to motionalise efforts to dispel the growing perception among the various camps, including Alan’s own, that the handsome Trade & Industry Minister is not only the President’s candidate but that everything is being done by the Castle to avoid an ignominious playback of the December 2005 humiliation, where the President’s candidate was neatly walloped by the un-cashed conscience of the party’s rank and file.

The first thing that the Presidency must constantly bear in mind between now and December 2008 is that the only contest that all forces and logistics must be marshalled against losing is the contest to beat the National Democratic Congress.

It is the only contest that requires the kind of libertine and profligate expenditures that are being talked about now. The December 2007 contest should not be mistaken for the December 2008 one. Therefore it does not require the kind of Mephistophelian machinations that are being allegedly engaged to be deployed.

This is the time that Kufuor must bring to the fore his nearly 40 years of political experience. Already, the handling of the decision to sack the Group of Eight Minister-Aspirants is being taken to mean he is losing his touch. It has been one long exercise of intermittent bouts of eureka as you go along.

If what was contained in the final statement issued by the Chief of Staff for the resigning (or is it resigned?) Ministers to stay on till their replacements are found was in the initial programme, much of the noisome clangour could have been avoided.

So out there, soon to be unleashed is a pack of hungry and not-so-happy wolves of presidential aspirants. These people, though all strong loyalists of the party, no longer feel mightily obliged to just keep mum on matters they know may tickle the sensibilities of the man on the high chair at Cabinet the wrong way.

The last thing President Kufuor should be doing now is to give them any feeling of being doubly whammed by him. Some are still testing the waters, believing in what they wish to believe in. Don’t let them think that it was you who blew them out of the water.

Already, the President risks having a vast vacuity in one important area of governance - media focus, as Ghana’s journalists are about to make priority calls on whether to follow the aspirants or reserve some pages for government business.

This is not the time for a President to offer more sensational dimensions of intrigue to the media chapters about to be read out between now and December.

Last Friday on Kweku Sekyi-Addo’s Front Page current affairs programme, in response to a question on what qualities Kufuor’s successor must possess, Qanawu said, 'the basic requirement is a deep and intimate appreciation of this country’s history to better inform in the mind of the next leader the need to maintain peace, stability and security.

All other things, such as accelerated development, can be added unto thee.’ President Kufuor and Francis Poku know all too well the costs of instability and the benefits of stability.

After this, Qanawu received a few calls, some wondering how those things should still be considered top priority. It was not for nothing that the first four Presidents of Independent America (from 1789-1817) were all founding fathers.

George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. James Monroe, the fifth President (1817-1825), was a close ally of Jefferson, a diplomat who played a leading role in the War of 1812 as secretary of war and secretary of state under James Madison.

His intimate knowledge of the cost of instability influenced him to profess what became known as the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, declaring US opposition to European interference.

John Quincy Adams, the sixth US President, did not win only because he was the son of President John Adams, as a most famous diplomat he was involved in many international negotiations towards the consolidation of the US, and for formulating the Monroe Doctrine.

Gen Andrew Jackson, the seventh US President, was the commander of the American forces at the secession-threatening Battle of New Orleans (1815), and a founder of the modern Democratic Party.

The Battle of New Orleans was the final major battle of the War of 1812, when forces under Gen Jackson decisively defeated an invading British army determined to seize New Orleans and America’s western lands.

As he departed the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked if the American Founders had created a monarchy or a republic. "A republic," he famously replied, "if you can keep it." And, to ensure they keep it, the leadership was extremely careful about the historical grounding of presidential candidates.

President Kufuor’s major pre-occupation, one would assume, is still to seek to maximise opportunities for his party to choose from a rich number of candidates who have not only what it takes to transform the Ghanaian economy, but equally so a clear sense of this country’s history and its chapters of pitfalls.

The fear is that the NPP ship has become game for the political pirates. With loyalties and support bases that have been built over the years being plundered by latter-day buccaneers armed with the swords and canons of Ghana Cedi, spotting both fake and authentic passes from the Castle.

You cannot pretend not to smell the growing pungency of evidence that alleged attempts by the President to push the candidacy of a single candidate is attracting overwhelming dissatisfaction within the other camps.

A while back, even though the rumours were gaining weight, with several independent corroborations, Qanawu was still ready to throw them all onto the junk heap. But, you cannot claim to be percipient and continue to disregard the kind of admissible evidence that even a kangaroo court would find difficult to slough off.

It has become common for people close to the President and Alan’s camp to say the race is between two men. His name is always appearing high in opinion polls. And this fact always triggers a fever of vicarious excitement at the Castle – well, at least a wing of the building.

The thinking then becomes that the contest is between just two men, take the other one out and all other things shall be added unto thee. But, Qanawu would at a later date show that it is far from that simplistic for any group of sufficiently time-served politicians to be so cocksure about.

For the President to masterfully throw his mighty weight behind a candidate in a contest over-packed with heavyweights would smack of the kind of amateurish sordidity one would normally not associate with a seasoned politician like His Excellency the President.

This is because, as it is happening now, whether justified or not, camps are, at least, uniting for the common enterprise of showing resentment against the alleged favouritism from the incumbent.

President Kufuor should play his cards very maturely or risk turning the weight of a heavy majority of his own party needlessly against himself. The field is too much of a minefield to attempt any obtrusive side-stepping and hip-hopping strategies.

Qanawu may sound finicky and pernickety about this but the truth is that President Kufuor is the only one with the potential, albeit inadvertent, to cause a split in the party. No split, however, can be permanent in the NPP.

Yet, it may be deep enough for the length of its healing process to frustrate the speedy post-congress coherence required for the December 2008 battle against the main threat to his legacy, the NDC.

Last month, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, in the clearest indication yet of his preference as his successor, came close to endorsing his deputy, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, with a lengthy, glowing tribute in the National Assembly.

Mbeki is on record as saying that he preferred a woman to be his successor as president of SA. For a long time it was assumed that this could be Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini- Zuma, but his effusive praise for Mlambo-Ngcuka at the conclusion of his budget vote debate has been the strongest indication yet of his preference.

But, here was a sitting President who had just suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of his African National Congress structures in his attempt to remain president of the party with another candidate becoming president of the country.

Mbeki knows his support base in the ANC had been severely dented by his treatment of his former deputy, Mr Zuma. He was gauging the pause of his party and would not move without being adequately certain.

Further out in the Kremlin, two candidates appear to be preparing to slug it out - Sergei Ivanov, 54, Russia’s former defence minister and first deputy prime minister, and Dmitri Medvedev, 41, Russia’s other first deputy prime minister.

What is clear in Russia is that whichever candidate Putin decides to endorse is guaranteed victory in next March’s election. The differences between Ivanov and Medvedev are not as big as they seem. Both are Putin proteges, both are unfailingly loyal and both represent the status quo. This is what makes the dynamics in Russia’s succession race less complicated than here.

In 2004, Namibian Lands Minister,Hifikepunye Phamba, President Sam Nujoma’s favourite candidate at the time, won his party nomination. Like Rawlings to the NDC here, President Nujoma, who led the party as it still was a rebel group fighting apartheid South Africa’s occupation of Namibia, was the founder of the party whose will was never undone.

But even there it was not that easy. Foreign Affairs Minister Hidipo Hamutenya was the favourite candidate of the party moderates, who wanted to stop the radicalisation of SWAPO. Mr Hamutenya however quickly was met with a smear campaign from the party’s top leadership, including President Nujoma, who called him an "agent of imperialists".

On 25 May, the President sacked Mr Hamutenya from the Foreign Ministry, further contributing to diminish his chances at the SWAPO congress. Another candidate, Education Minister Nahas Angula, a consensus-builder, also soon became the victim of "dirty tricks" from the SWAPO leadership.

In 1999, Mexican leader Ernesto Zedillo forced through his favourite candidate, Interior Minister Francisco Labastida Ochoa, and party favourite Roberto Madrazo Pintado, the brash governor of Tabasco state.

The President’s man won only to become the first presidential candidate of his party, Institutional Revolutionary Party, to lose a presidential election, when he lost to Vicente Fox in 2000. In the July 2006 general election, Ochoa played by his size to win a senatorial seat to represent the state of Sinaloa, which he is happily serving.

The reality is that you cannot impose vestigial political limbs on your party when there are more consummate characters to contend with. Qanawu would however issue a rider that the above article has been specifically written on the presumption or hypothesis that the allegations are true. Without prejudice.