NDC Youth Polls: Think beyond 2020 - Goosie Tanoh urges delegates

Presidential aspirant of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Augustus Goosie Tanoh has sent a strong-worded statement to admonish delegates to think beyond winning election 2020 and elect leaders who are hungry and willing to "help rebuild the party in these difficult times"

In his good-will message ahead of the party's National Women and Youth elections slated for today, Saturday, October 27, Mr. Goosie Tanoh encouraged delegates to choose selfless and dedicated leaders who would assit to restore public trust in the NDC for a one touch victory come 2020 presidential elections.

Part of the statement released and signed by its campaign Cordinator, Kyeretwie Opoku read "victory in 2020 is indeed an important agenda for the party. However, the NDC needs to focus not just winning elections but on how it can engage with, lead, and actually improve the lot of Citizens in particular women and the youth, our farmers, working classes, indigenous entrepreneurs and progressive intellectuals".

Goosie Tanoh charged delegates to "fight against the top-down bureaucratization and shameful monetization of the party life that brought the NDC to its knees just two years ago".

Below is the full statement

NDC National Women & Youth Conference Solidarity Message from Organising for Ghana (O4GH) & the Goosie Tanoh Presidential Campaign (GOOSIE2020)

“Working Together to Win 2020?”

O4GH and the GOOSIE2020 extend greetings and solidarity to all contestants, delegates and officials participating in the NDC Youth and Women’s Conference at Gomoa on 27 October 2018. We congratulate you on the commitment and energy you have shown by traveling from all over the country to help rebuild the Party in these difficult times.

Your Conference is themed “Working together to win in 2020”. Victory in 2020 is indeed an important agenda for the Party. However, the NDC needs to focus not just on winning elections but on how it can _engage with, lead, and actually improve the lot of citizens in particular women and the youth, our farmers, working classes, indigenous entrepreneurs and progressive intellectuals._

Women and Youth must take the lead in the important exercise of expanding the Party’s outlook. We hope therefore that in your deliberations you will think far beyond 2020 and not confine yourself to only electioneering. We hope that you will discuss a vision for the nation and the Party. We hope that you will then elect leaders capable of turning this vision into programmes and pushing internally for their adoption, refining, and implementation over the next 10 or 20 years - *whether the Party is in power or not.* We hope above all that your vision and programmes remain firmly rooted in the needs and aspirations of ordinary women and youth and that you will prioritise faithfulness to the Party’s principles, truth, transparency, and accountability above the ambitions of any individual sponsors or factions. We pray that you will lead the fight against the top-down bureaucratisation and shameful monetisation of Party life that brought the NDC to its knees just 2 years ago.

We understand fully the challenges you face. And we must choose to be hopeful about these outcomes in the midst of the current gloom and despair because the social constituencies you represent in the Party and nationally are those most badly affected by our national crisis - and the accumulation of policies and programmes that historically have prioritised the private ambitions of entrenched foreign interests, “family and friends” politicians, corrupt bureaucrats and other special interests over and above our society‘s urgent and collective development needs. Women and youth suffer most from the wholesale theft of public resources and the state’s resultant inability to provide basic and critical social services like healthcare, education, public transportation, employment, rent controlled housing, and public safety. Women and youth have the greatest need for the national democratic transformation that we established our dear party NDC to lead.

We dare to be hopeful also because, once mobilised, no social force has greater capacity to transform society than women and youth. You, more than any other social constituency, represent our ingenuity, our energy, our courage, our idealism and above all our capacity to organise! Once Women and Youth become fully conscious of their power and understand their historic mission there is no stopping; and once they make a choice; no force under heaven can hold you back. Indeed if, and only if, the Party’s women and Youth (coordinated by their respective Wings) remobilise their branches and engage their communities, workplaces and schools that we can restore public trust and indeed achieve victory in 2020.

Unleashing this transformative grassroots power to put the NDC and Ghana back on track is the sole agenda of O4GH and GOOSIE2020. We will continue to demonstrate how effective grassroots activism has been in the past and demonstrate how we can achieve this again today. We look forward to constructive challenging work with you to substantively increase the voice and influence of women and youth in the NDC.

We hope that your deliberations will be substantive and that the elections will be transparent and fair to all such that the will of the Women and Youth organisers is fully expressed and respected and that we can be a united force for change going forward.

Let us rise together!!!

We have a Choice!!!

Long live NDC!!!

Long Live Ghana!!!

Signed!

Kyeretwie Opoku

Coordinator