1949 Redivivus

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Following his breakaway from the rump-Convention People’s Party last December, and his recent creation of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) earlier this month, his jilted political bedfellows of the rump-CPP have signaled their intention to vigorously contest the right of their former major bankroller to using the label of “People’s Party” as an integral part of the name of his breakaway Progressive People’s Party (See “CPP Protests Nduom’s Use of ‘People’s Party’ in PPP” Ghanaweb.com 1/6/12).

What is quite fascinating here is the fact that the Afari-Djan-headed Ghana National Electoral Commission (GNEC) does not seem to have had any problem, whatsoever, in differentiating the name of Progressive People’s Party (PPP) from that of the rump-Convention People’s Party (CPP), thus the commission’s rather expeditious decision to issue the Nduom group with a provisional certificate of registration.

But that Dr. Nduom’s decision to leave the party under which he has actively participated in both local and national politics for some two decades now has visibly dispirited Chairman Samia Yaba Nkrumah and her minions, cannot be gainsaid. The very publicly stated decision of the CPP to legally contest Dr. Nduom’s right to using the label of “People’s Party” in his newly-formed Progressive People’s Party, vividly underscores the state of confusion into which the rump-Convention People’s Party has been thrown.

As observed not quite awhile ago, the rump-CPP appears to be in a delirious state of denial, thus its rather annoying attempt at picking a fight with the 2008 rump-CPP presidential candidate. Needless to say, it is a fight which the rump-CPP definitely cannot win. What is historically ironic here, though, is that in June 1949, scarcely two years after he had been named to the sole paid position of General-Secretary of the Grant and Danquah-led United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), the future Prime Minister and later President Kwame Nkrumah, envisaging a heady opportunity of leading the erstwhile Gold Coast to independence as Ghana, abruptly resigned from the UGCC and formed his now historic Convention People’s Party (CPP). Nkrumah would also abscond with the working papers containing the policy agenda of the UGCC, including the William (Paa Willie) Ofori-Atta-conceived and hatched free-education policy.

That dramatic break would effectively doom the institutional viability of the UGCC as erstwhile Gold Coasters had hitherto known it. And by 1954 when Dr. Danquah officially retired from active political activities, the UGCC had morphed into a wistful and pathetic relic of its former self. There is no doubt, whatsoever, that Dr. Nduom, a self-styled avatar of Ghana’s first premier, envisaged a similar fate for the rump-CPP when he decided to dramatically sever links with the latter on the last Wednesday of 2011. The “progressive language” which the former employment and energy minister under President John Agyekum-Kufuor appropriated in declaring his split from the rump-CPP, strikingly echoed that of the legendary African Show Boy. “Forward Ever, Backward Never,” the American-trained multi-millionaire economist had averred.

What further makes Dr. Nduom’s faux-promethean move also memorable is the fact that like his hero before him, Edina Kwesi had deftly, albeit rather cheaply and mischievously, decided to plagiarize the most catchy aspect of the name of the rump-CPP. In the case of the Show Boy, that label was “Convention,” while for Dr. Nduom it was “People’s Party.” In both instances, however, the glaring objective was to bamboozle and hoodwink.

Needless to say, Nkrumah readily and easily got away with his tactical mischief because rather than vigorously challenge him in a legitimately constituted court of law, the untenably smug eggheads of the UGCC decided to mock the Show Boy’s apparently infelicitous appreciation for Europhonic semantics. This haughty attitudinal levity would prove to be their fatal undoing. The Show Boy would, of course, have the last laugh.

No doubt, being a good student of her own father’s political intrigues and ideological shenanigans, Chairman Samia Yaba Nkrumah is determined not to let the fate of Danquah’s “Convention” repeat itself. Likewise, Edina Kwesi is hell-bent on actualizing his vaulting, Nkrumaist ambition of becoming Ghana’s president, come rain or shine, as it were. And it is this quixotic contest of wills that is likely to light up the otherwise drab margins of small-time Ghanaian politics in the lead-up to Election 2012. And who said dramatic side-shows have no place in Fourth-Republican Ghanaian politics?

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.

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