To resurrect the Nkrumaist Convention People’s Party (CPP) from its political limbo and propel it to any future landslide victory, there is the urgent need for a “second mobiliser” who has vision and mission like its founder and first President of Ghana, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, to steer the affairs of the party.
Speaking to The Crusading Guide, a Research Fellow at the Legon Centre for International Affairs (LECIA) Dr Vladimir Antwi-Danso, reiterated that collectively, the CPP leadership has not defined any vision towards which they are mobilising the people.
Hear him, “Today they get up and say Kufuor is not doing anything. It that what is important? Tomorrow they get up and say we are social democrats, the third day, they are going to NDC to hold talks. What are we preparing ourselves for? What is the agenda and focus?”
Throwing more light on the need for a visionary leader who would lead the party to the “promised land,” the political scientist observed that the party enjoys a lot of goodwill from Ghanaians who are anxiously waiting for such “a mobilizer” to propel the party to the Castle.
In his reaction to the proposed “Positive Action” to be embarked upon by the CPP against the Kufuor’s administration for mal-administration, Dr Antwi-Danso angrily charged, “it is na?ve and stupid. The Positive Action Nkrumah called for was not this kind of stupid positive action.”
According to him, if what the Chairman of the CPP, Dr Abubakar Alhassan, was calling for was directed against what Prez Kufuor had done so far, then “I am sorry but if it is positive action to rejuvenate and re-awaken the CPP, then it is in order,” adding that the attacks on Paa Kwesi Nduom were uncalled for.
He called on the leadership of the party to treasure the need for all Nkrumaist parties, CPP, NRP, PNC to merge into a giant CPP.
Dr Antwi-Danso, in his reaction to Dr Abubakar Alhassan’s assertion on a radio station some few weeks back to the effect that when Rawlings came to power in 1993, the opposition and Ghanaians demonstrated against the recent increases in fuel prices, said, Abubakar’s statement does not hold water and was “na?ve because a budget is a yearly thought- out plan, we need to be a bit intellectual about some of these things.”
Expatiating on the fuel price hikes, he said, “we have a debt incurred by government, we are selling petrol below the world market price and the world market prices are going up. Shall we continue to subsidize petrol? We can but that means, expenditure on education, health, roads among other infrastructure would have to be stopped or cut down.”
On the other hand, he contended that “we could subsidize until we cannot subsidize again. So in about a year, no more petrol will come into the country. So do we subsidize while at the same time salaries remain bad? There will come a time the economy will grind to a halt.”
Sounding a note of caution, he said, “if we play politics with the economy, we make the government unpopular, the government is overthrown.”
Lamenting over Kwesi Pratt’s statement on Peace FM that “demonstrations are part of the sequence of overthrowing a government,” Antwi-Danso threw the challenge to the likes of Pratt to answer whether this government or any government anywhere in the world which comes into power can have anything from anywhere in the world to subsidize the economy since the IMF and the World Bank or any bilateral or multi-lateral donor would not give money to subsidize things in any country at all.
