By Konongo Fordjour - 01 July 2009
The latest developments in our family history are ground-breaking that deserve praise and more encouragements to continue with the great job well done. The New Patriotic Party (NPP) is a dynamic political party, founded on strong liberal democratic philosophy. Can we give its real befitting name as The Nationalist Party (NP), due to our family’s serious concern of our beloved nation? Our deep unity in the party always encourages us to come together and mend issues quickly to pave the way for us to lead again.
Every situation is confronted with its own challenges. We stayed very long in opposition but in spite of our different opinions, we remained together. Many parties were deliberately formed to destroy our unity but they all withered in front of the mighty United Party (UP) family. We made some minor mistakes which cost the family dearly and we lost the elections, but one thing that inspires me is that we were not out.
Today, our supreme committee sets yet another milestone into future leadership, completely different from the way politics plays in Ghana. Our party’s precedent sets the twenty-first century standards that will daze any known alternative party in our modern day governance. Honestly, I must declare my unreserved pride for our party that, this is extremely, great job in the right direction.
Broadening the decision-making parameters to include a larger number of our members brings us closer to decentralizing power to create fairer environment for transparency to rule. Although a further step could have been made, the mere existence of the fundamental understanding to change brings home, the hope, anticipated by our traditionally conservative family. This is absolutely laudable and must be applauded.
However, the misconceptions and dissatisfactions that had always drawn us backwards, primarily, were due to the fact that fewer people had always determined our fate regarding the selection of our leaders. The problem of insisting on the constituency executive team and some selected few determining the family’s fate of leadership is absolutely unacceptable.
I have always campaigned for pluralism with regard to elections. I strongly believe in the universality of voting by membership cards. Honestly, if we have agreed to move from 2,300 voters to more than 115,000 voters (i.e. more than 5000%) then what really stops us from including the remaining less than 87,000 members composed of largely overseas members? These figures are quoted from General Secretary Ntow’s report at the Denver-Colorado Conference, purging our total membership at 206,000. The fear of opposition members’ infiltration into our party is one single possible cause for the continuous denial of the good lot of our loyal honorable members in the overseas branches. I strongly disagree with this opinion, or call it, perception.
Our political understanding in Ghana is seriously advanced. Cross-carpeting has been the case in advanced democracies; and in fact many of our own elderly family members, including our only president, have crossed carpets many times. In spite of their cross carpet experiences, their loyalties for our family had never shaken; and honestly, they have proven to be real trustworthy leaders to emulate. Our current predicament, translated into fear of infiltration of the opposition party members to undermine the exercise, is because our party has done poor job with its non-existence of credible and reliable membership data that can be sourced.
Should the idea champions in this area of change management had been permitted to work some eight years ago, we would not be locked up in fear of change and still insist on keeping the failed status-quo. One possible reason to extend voting to constituency polling agents to increase the number to the proposed 115,000 is that they have been around for a while, at least two years.
However, Konongo Fordjour, who has grown grey hair in the party, does not qualify to vote because he has chosen to live overseas. However, with no malice, even if our newly recruited hardworking member, Lady Frances Essiam, stays close enough to the powerful and most influential folks in our family, her short stay can easily be commuted into card-carrying voting fellow; and please underline this, even be rewarded a possible party executive position. Our family is a liberal democratic party that widely opens itself to recruit members into our fold. Now if knowing loyal members by the positions they hold in Ghana, to be the best informed voting strategy, then why should it be too hard to find loyal NPP-USA, NPP-UK & Ireland, NPP-Canada, NPP-Australia, NPP-Italy, etc. to vote as well?
Our fears need to be reassessed because the good thing about overseas branches is that we have developed data that allow us to identify one another easily. An opportunity NPP-Ghana does not have. Moreover and importantly, since the exercise proposes to use direct polling station voting, I strongly suggest that centers must be created at the overseas branches at the braches’ expense to vote. Five overseas braches must have five polling stations to exercise their franchise. Members must travel to the selected stations to vote. Results will be declared at the stations same day and reported instantaneously to Accra.
General Secretary Ntow sometimes surprises me because he has caused numerous sensations that leave people staring and eye-rolling. I suggest that our lovely honorable gentleman must do a good job by reading, researching, and conferring broad enough before coming out with a statement. My difficulty in comprehending our family scribe presentation is inherent in this constitutional provision of our party. Let us all read together and please try and educate me on this particular provision. Now, let’s start:
“In Polling Station Executive elections all card-bearing and paid up members in good standing in the polling areas shall vote.â€
What does the above sentence mean? Are there constitutional lawyers around to send me back to class one to learn the basics of the “English language†before coming over to open my super extra large mouth again? In our NPP-USA case, I think the quote above will mean that all the good standing card-carrying members, who participated in our last elections here, are also eligible to vote in the forth coming parliamentary and presidential primaries in Ghana. Folks, what do you think? Am I wrong with my thinking in this direction? Someone, please, help me!
Please, let us agree to one basic thing that our successive executive teams have failed dismally to bring decision-making machinery to the level where it is due. Political parties are developed through money and people. The more we are, the most likely that we can increase our war chest through fundraising. And importantly, we can increase our number if people are confident that their voices will be heard when they initiate one.
Please let us involve many, many people in the process of our decision-making because wisdom is not in one person‘s head alone. I simply cannot understand why we need peoples’ money, support, and eventually their vote but do not want their role in decision-making. At this twenty-first century of politics, the dysfunctional worshipping of political demigods must cease immediately.
Please my name is Konongo Fordjour, and I am NPP diehard. I belong to our party’s overseas constituency with its polling station in the New York City. Please, I also want to vote, and I want to vote now. I am prepared to pay any amount of fee that will allow me to vote in my overseas constituency. Laziness and difficulty to strike innovative ideas by the executive team should not be translated into a perpetual curse for some members not to vote.
On the second note, I strongly agree with our NEC to scale it down to only two (2) presidential aspirants, but only after a series of processes have been passed. However I totally disagree that only two contestants will be allowed to apply. That will be dictatorship, force rule, and imposition of candidates on our party, and I completely condemn this move ahead of time before it develops into policy.
Please let us allow any member of good standing to contest. We need to create five blocks of our party’s power brokers and assign points to them. For instance, Block A can be called the Ollenu Caucus, Block B can be Dombo Caucus, Block C the Danquah Caucus, Block D the Kaleo Caucus, and Block E the Busia or Kufuor Caucus. The regions can be divided any how we want. For instance, Ashanti Region can be paired with Volta Region and called the Kaleo Caucus (Block D); Central Region and Upper West Region can form the Danquah Caucus (Block C); Greater Accra and Northern Regions can make the Busia or Kufuor Caucus; and so forth. The weights of the blocks will be determined by the number of constituencies in them.
For instance there are 39 constituencies in Ashanti Region and 22 in Volta Region; and together the Kaleo Caucus will have 61 points for candidates to grab. The votes collected by a candidate will be weighted against the 61 points. If a candidate is not able to obtain a certain number of percentage points in the first three rounds in the block voting in the standards set by our party, then the candidate automatically drops out of the race. Alternatively, we may analyze our votes on 22,000 points based on the polling stations as well.
The polling voting series grills the presidential candidates in the first round to scale down to the required number of competitors, while the Block Caucus method offers the final round. The polling voting system will decide the final results for the parliamentary candidates while it will act as the initial stages of the presidential contest in the primaries. We should set fair but very tough standards that will have no blemishes and stand out in our Ghanaian political arena; a pride the opposition parties will be jealous of.
Please, we are on the right track and let us all put efforts in building a rock solid party for our generation and future generations to come. I honestly trust that, together, we can create a better life in our family. Right now, the ruling party is in serious problem.
The government finds it hard to adapt to democratic governance. I will continue to expose its weaknesses, but we have to do a good job by consolidating our position, by unifying our members, and the way to do that, is simply allowing every member the right to vote to choose our leaders. When this is done, I am positively sure that the 2012 elections will fall on our side, more especially, considering the controversies and failures recorded by the NDC government.
Please let us swallow our pride and remove the most deadly issue, (the denial to vote) that continues to dissipate us, to pave the way for our party to come back to power again. Let us count on all our statesmanship. All of us, presidents, parliamentarians, elders, and members. Thanks for your time and God Bless!
Konongo Fordjour, Boston-MA
