Editorial: NDC needs bridges, not walls.

Talking about divisions in “Mending Walls” Robert Frost wrote from the 23rd to the 35th line as follows.

“There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows?

But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.”

To say that the attempt by the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the National Democratic Congress to organize a congress to elect a presidential candidate for the 2012 elections is an enterprise that will further divide the party would be an understatement.

Fact is that what the party needs now is a careful analysis of what might be the cause of the deep-sited animosity between the two major divisions in the party.

If this is done, then the party leadership would be able to deal with the concerns of the different forces and then they can have a party united behind government.

It was however surprising that when NEC met about two weeks ago, they rather decided to take the easy way out, by fixing a congress date, just because some so-called journalists had suggested an early congress for the party as a panacea to the wrangling in the party.

The questions they should have asked themselves are whether the election of a presidential candidate would have dealt with the disappointment of the rank and file who feel short-changed after they had helped the party return to power.

Also will the election of the candidate resolve the problems President John Mills and former president John Rawlings have with each other?

Now listening to some supporters who belong to either he Konadu or Mills camps, it becomes clearer that Sunyani, instead of being a good omen for the party, rather portends greater danger for party cohesion.

There are those who say that “Sunyani will teach the Rawlingses a lesson. And as Ben Ephson puts it, that is where the decision about “Who is who in the NDC will be known.”

Then others also believe that the Mills-Ato Ahwoi boys will be put at their proper places.

With these sentiments, no smart political leader will hope that after he Sunyani congress, the party will know peace. It is only an attempt to sweep the causes of rivalry in the party under the carpet.

If the differences between the two camps were not resolved, no matter who wins the Sunyani primaries, the party risks going back into opposition in 2013, as the two camps are hell-bent on showing the other where power lies.

It must be understood that underneath the decision by Mrs. Rawlings to contest President Mills lies genuine concerns for the future f the party with masses of unmotivated followers who are beginning to see the NDC as nothing different from the NPP, the party whose alleged miss-rule the NDC fought vociferously between 2001 and 2008.

So like Frost stated, the party must consider whom the Sunyani congress would be “walling in,” and whom it might be “walling out.”

If there are any real party fathers left in the NDC. Men with hard balls, women with guts, this is the time for them to wake up and bring Rawlings and Mills to the table to dialogue over their differences, ironing them out, and charting a new and permanent course for the party.

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