Investigate SFO report on Nduom - CPP activist

Accra, June 3, GNA - Madam Lucy Anin, Member of the Council of Elders of Convention People's Party (CPP), on Tuesday called for thorough investigations into the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) report that allegedly incriminated the party's flag bearer Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom.

"There is the need for Dr Nduom and the party as a whole to test the report and clear his name before anything happens which would affect the party during the general elections," Madam Anin, a former CPP Member of Parliament during the Nkrumah regime, stated at press conference in Accra.

She called on the leadership to purge itself of all doubts and negatives that undermined the party and maintain discipline. She added that the party was sadly lending itself to the "commercial politics" of the New Patriotic Party and National Democratic Congress against the very nature of relying on the people for support and called on its leaders to draw an organizational acumen that would draw members along.

Madam Anin called on the CPP leadership to wake up and rise to the occasion of salvaging the country from its socio-economic problems. She noted that the current hardships in the country could all be traced to the neo-liberal economic philosophy which the country was forced to adopt after the 1966 coup.

"In our country today, unemployment of the employable, hopelessness, poverty and lack of opportunities, high crime rate and general decadence, among others, have been the effect of the socio-economic crisis in which Ghana finds herself."

Madam Anin said right after political independence, the country had embarked on the difficult journey of attaining economic freedom but after the coup, subsequent governments were turned into accepting policies and programmes that did not offer solutions to the problems that confronted the country.

She noted that state enterprises had been privatized to mostly multi-nationals who ripped the country of several millions of dollars and said if they existed today, they would have offered hope and employment to the unemployed.

Madam Anin asserted that in the light of these difficulties, the CPP was the obvious alternative that Ghanaians needed to be back on track but was quick to say that the party had shot itself in the heart by electing someone who did not believe in the party's ideologies and interest.

"The CPP must ready itself to this task by convincing Ghanaians that it is the surest and most credible alternative to lead the nation."

Mr. Kwame Wiafe, a member of the Council of Elders, who chaired the function attributed the problems in the country to leaders' inability to educate the youth about the past and the present. He said the CPP was now stronger than ever and added that the brains behind the 1966 coup that led to the overthrow of Dr Kwame Nkrumah were using some CPP members and all sorts of tactics to destabilize the party.

He called on all rank and file of the party to remain united and work towards winning power in election 2008.