Opposition parties must merge -Prof

A MEMBER of the Convention People's Party (CPP), Prof. Yaw Appiah Nuama Akyeampong has called for a merger of the opposition parties in the country in order to evict the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) from power in 2008.

According to him, the current prevailing situation in the country coupled with the impending corruption and cocaine behaviour in the present administration has made it imperative for such alliance so as to get the government out of power at all cost through the ballot box.

"If the present government is not removed from office through the ballot box, an atmosphere will be generated by other uprising for that, simply because the present level of corruption is high and dangerous", he noted.

According to the former KNUST professor, the ineptitude behaviour of the ruling government seems to have given a free role to the police service, which appears to be involved in cocaine dealings, corruption and other malfeasance.

"Ghana has become the transit quarters for hard drugs, which involves top officers of the Police Service", he noted and urged government to remove from office all those officers mentioned in the unfolding cocaine scandal saga.

Prof. Akyeampong imputed that he would not be surprise to hear one morning that some government officials are in coalition with these drug barons since as he put it, "the so called rich members are now known to be cocaine peddlers."

He believed the political atmosphere as at present offers a brighter chance for a take over from the NPP government, but argued that until the 'smaller' political parties come together under one umbrella in the name of CPP, this 'opportunity' could easily slip by.

"The NDC on its own cannot and will not be given the chance by the electorate because of the party's military behaviour and involvement as well as Ex-President factor."

"Please, the NDC should be forgotten as a party to revolve the PNC, DFP, CPP, Eagle and the rest around.

The party has no chance again", Prof. Akyeampong stated in an interaction with The Chronicle.

About the emerging Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), the CPP activist disclosed that it has no track record to rally the parties around, indicating that the DFP is pre-destined not to survive and doomed to follow the simple route of the National Reform Party (NRP), which broke away from the NDC as well.

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"The DFP is very similar to the default NRP, which couldn't survive a single general election. It went into oblivion soon after the 1996 elections", the former senior lecturer at KNUST Engineering Department observed.

Apart from having no track record, Prof. Akyeampong also said the DFP lacks ideology thereby making it incapable to be a rally point for the parties to unity and select a single candidate for the 2008 'ding-dong battle' and both PNC and Eagle have no structures to ride on.

"It therefore leaves out a single party like CPP with the excellent platform upon which the NDC, DFP, PNC, DPP and Eagle can ride on in order to select a candidate who can annex power from the NPP", he concluded.