Kwame Pianim To Join NPP Race?

One of the country’s foremost and renowned economic and investment brains may soon join the list of aspirants of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) seeking to succeed President J. A. Kufuor, if representations being made to him to run manage to sway him. Credible information made available to GO in the last week reveal that Mr. Pianim, who is the Chairman of the Public Utilities & Regulatory Commission (PURC) and an NPP titan of long standing, has been approached by several high ranking and well-meaning persons to nail his flag to the mast and announce his candidature; to add some more seriousness to the race to succeed President Kufuor.

Sources close to Mr. Pianim told GO that though he (Pianim) has unceasingly told those who have come to him with proposals that his main obsession is to ensure that the NPP picks a fitting candidate from the list of 17 or so persons who have expressed the hope to lead the NPP for next year’s election, the pressure on him is mounting to the point where he has to state what his answer is to the propositions to him.

‘The man is concerned that the young men and women in the party should be preparing to take up positions of responsibility. He is prepared to help in all ways possible to ensure that the Danquah-Busia tradition presents a solid united front for the 2008 elections; but at the same time he is reeling under too much pressure by way of representations, petitions and deputations to him to run,` a close aide told this paper over the weekend.

Should Kwame Pianim decide to run, many of the personalities involved in the race to succeed President Kufuor will cower at his large and visionary presence and may well withdraw their candidature to possibly back him.

His candidature will also compel the NDC’s Professor Mills and his strategists to do a rethink of how to beat the NPP. In the ranks of the NPP, many refer to him as `Master,` `Boss` etc among other honorifics to underlie the fact that he is looked upon as a natural leader of the party.

Many Ghanaians remember the fact that Kwame Pianim was clearly going to win the NPP’s flagbearership contest for the 1996 election, until Rosemary Ekwam, another party member invoked the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court for the interpretation of the issue of whether or not someone who has served a jail term could take up an executive position in a party or even go on to contest the presidency in what is now known in Ghana law as Ekwam Vrs. Pianim.

The Supreme Court ruled against the possibility of Pianim’s candidature in that suit causing him to exhaust the review mechanism of the Supreme Court, all to no avail. It was Pianim`s contention that what the 1979 and 1992 constitutions sought to prevent was the overthrow of a constitution enacted by the sovereign will of the people and not protection for a coup regime when a citizen rises up to overthrow that regime in order to restore the very constitution that was suspended.

Pianim had served 10 years in Rawlings’s gulag for attempting to overthrow the PNDC and it was this fact coupled with the fact the 1992 Constitution and other laws of the land prevents some categories of prisoners from running for political office that was used against him. He was at the time he was released from prison one of the longest serving political prisoners in Ghana and was even adopted by the international human rights group, Amnesty International.

Pianim was at the time when the Supreme Court ruling put paid to his quest to lead the NPP to the 1996 election considered the man to beat among other aspirants like the late Professor Albert Adu Boahen and John Agyekum Kufuor.

In the end, in the absence of Pianim, John Kufuor caused a major upset when he beat Adu Boahen and led the NPP to that year’s election with the People`s Convention Party`s (PCP) candidate and then sitting Vice President the late Neenyi Kow Nkensen Arkaah as his running mate.

Pianim had so much support in the NPP and even in non-NPP circles with movers and shakers like Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobby, the then young titans of the Young Executive Forum of the NPP and Akenten Appiah Menka among others supporting his candidature.

In the case of Alan who was very prominent in the Young Executives Forum, the group which had originally talked about putting him up to run against the Kufuors and Adu Boahens quickly beat a retreat and put their support for him on hold and instead backed Pianim.

At a press conference by Pianim in 1996 to announce his candidature, Alan was present as well as others like Appiah Menka, Council of State Chairman Professor Adzei Bekoe and Health Minister Major (R’td) Courage Quarshigah among others. Quarshigah was at the time seen as the Campaign Manager of Pianim.

It is not known what Alan’s reaction will be if Pianim bows to the pressure to run as he (Alan) can clearly be viewed now as someone who has become a solid politician who is even reported as sometimes being first or second in some polls of the 17 or so aspirants that the NPP has today.

Pianim was handed a last minute pardon by former President Rawlings before he left office on January 7, 2001; thus clearing him to run for president if he so wishes.

The coming days will determine whether Pianim will do a re-jig of his 1996 campaign which sent shivers down the spines of the Kufuors and Adu Boahens and cause a stir at the NPP’s Congress on December 22.