CPP Is a Dead Horse, Period!

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

Media fixture Ben Ephson is being needlessly charitable when he advises key operatives of the rump-Convention People’s Party (CPP) to squarely focus on winning a critical mass of parliamentary seats before gunning for the presidency in the near future (See “CPP Must Not Contest 2012 Presidential Election – Ben Ephson” Ghanaweb.com 5/14/12).

Indeed, the problem of the Samia Yaba Nkrumah-led CPP is one of sheer anachronism – the sort of tired Soviet-oriented and effete socialist ideology that has long receded down the fiery political imagination and interest of the average Ghanaian old enough to remember those chaotic, bloody and regrettable times when the Kwame Nkrumah-led CPP totally and hermetically dominated the postcolonial national landscape.

Refreshingly, with the epic and massive collapse of the hitherto most viable socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and the erstwhile Soviet Union, with the humongous Chinese economy drastically transformed along the lines of the Western-type free-market system, not much has been left that is either productive or attractive about this patently unsavory and hawkish brand of state-capitalism, in which most of a country’s worth comes to be inordinately concentrated in the hands of the fortunate few, as was nauseatingly witnessed under President Nkrumah, while the best and brightest among the ranks of the ideological opposition were economically hobbled and, under the very best of circumstances, “mercifully” left to rot in jail houses; and in the worst of circumstances, slowly and systematically subjected to raw and painful deaths, directly preceded by abject personal humiliation for daring to reason for themselves outside the proverbial box.

The fact of the matter is that, not many Ghanaians have fond memories of the CPP being a remarkable promoter of civil liberties and multiparty democracy. And so it is quite a wonder that Ghanaians, in the name of democracy, should agree to allow this most odious and extortionate political scourge of our postcolonial history to continue to taunt those of us whose forebears fiercely fought and paid the ultimate sacrifice to ensure the achievement of our present democratic political dispensation.

Indeed, beyond the personal charisma of its founding-proprietor, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, there is absolutely nothing worth preserving about our memories of the original CPP, short of meticulously instructing our children and grandchildren vis-à-vis the untold atrocities perpetrated by CPP capos and their fanatical local operatives, and particularly the need to ensuring that this villainous group of Ghanaian Talibans never rises to assume the august reins of democratic governance in this country, in order to finish the purportedly unfinished business of Nkrumaism.

Needless to say, in every society there exists that cancerous group of rascals and the deliberately retarded who refuse to healthily transcend the exhausted and unusable past, by moving with the rest of their fellow citizens into a new and progressive dispensation, where individual achievement and diligence are accorded priority over the gangster-style culture of political predators who would insist on robbing and exploiting the dirt-poor in the name of common wealth creation or socialism.

In sum, whatever else it pretends to be, the rump-Convention People’s Party would never be able to upstage the Woyome-sponsored and Rawlings-minted National Democratic Congress when it comes to the practice of socialism, as Ghanaians have grown into traumatic recognition of the same. Bluntly put: the rump-CPP is absolutely no worthwhile alternative to either of Fourth-Republican Ghana’s two major political parties, namely, the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) and, of course, the ruling National Democratic Congress.

The rump-CPP is a veritable museum piece that has been laboriously and interminably waiting to be consigned as such. The pity, however, is for most of its key operatives to continue luridly flirting with that which was never even a quarter as golden and/or meaningful as they would have their handful of captive followers and sympathizers believe.

*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 “Danquah v. Nkrumah: In the Words of Mahoney.” E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.