The NDC Should Not Dare Fail The People

The challenges facing the NDC today can unleash both positive and negative consequences. It is disturbing and concerning that the adverse consequences seem to be carrying the day. We wish to bring to the fore some of the basic factors that inspired and continue to inspire the unacceptable public drama being played within the NDC.

LEADERSHIP PROBLEMS

The ultimate responsibility for peace in our party rests on the President and the top hierarchy of the party. The president who holds power in the country today has the means and ability to engage or disengage with the former President more than the vice versa. We must therefore be worried that there does not seem to be active communication between these two key men. There are many conflicts across the globe today because some believe that they will not negotiate with those who oppose them for whatever reason. The NDC leadership appears to be presiding over a similar situation without clear efforts towards achieving a resolution.

Organisations work effectively if there are systems in place to build consensus. Petty excuses such as not being in talking terms with one member or the other should not be countenanced. Lack of coordination among the NDC leadership and the party’s communication apparatus exposes it to too many embarrassing contradictions. If the party’s leadership remains inconsistent and undisciplined in their utterances and dealings with the media and the main protagonists, the NDC will present a sorry sight beyond July 2011.

The NPP’s promise to destroy the NDC appears to be bearing fruit. JH Mensah made the declaration immediately after the NPP came to power in 2001. They now sit silently watching, and wishing the NDC crumbles. Is anything too much for the ear to hear or for the mouth to say? Why are the former President and President not continually engaged? Is the president trying to prove to the NPP propaganda machinery that he is not a poodle to former President Rawlings?

The NPP knows that it is coherent because it is narrowly based on a tribal core which does not permit inclusion from without. This is diametrically opposed to an all-inclusive NDC party based on a social democratic principle. It is therefore to be understood that the NPP will do anything and everything to cause the disintegration of the NDC. Why are the leadership and ‘New Big Men’ of the NDC failing to see through this?

LACK OF DISCIPLINE AND THE NEW BIG MAN SYNDROM

Many are the ‘new big men’ created by the ascension of the NDC2 to power. But they seem to have quickly distanced themselves from the grassroots machinery. This ‘new big men’ also seem to find it easy to speak publicly and vilify the founder. When has this become acceptable? And when has Rawlings’ public pronouncement become unacceptable to the NDC? Former President Rawlings’ public utterances were to the advantage of the party’s quest to return to power. How come it has now become a problem?

Actions and inactions by some members of the party cannot be said to be those that can unite the party. It appears that arrogance on the part of some who fail to submit to the supreme interest of the party is the reason the rancour is deepening.

Those people who are expected to do better have reduced themselves to something else, with some believing that former president Rawlings has no significance. They must be leaving in the moon to hold this view. In as much as the founder’s statements may be deemed too abrasive for the current government, it behove the leadership to seek to resolve this in-house.

In this vain some questions remain relevant here.

• Do we know as a party the number of members who are quiet and are hurting in one way or the other?

• Are we saying that people who criticise might not have legitimate reasons for their actions or what they do?

• Why has the NDC substituted critical examination of real issues with a zealous anti-Rawlings cabal, a herd mentality and hypocrisy?

THINGS FALL APART. LACK OF A RALLYING CENTRE.

All organisations, be they political, social, economic or financial revolve around certain personalities and ideologies. But we now have a set of ‘New Big Men’ who are zealously working at destroying Rawlings, the founder of the NDC. Like poodles, they have rushed to take the bait thrown by the NPP propaganda media machinery since the Swedro declaration. Today Rawlings who was legitimately targeted as the morale spine of the NDC by the NPP has now become a threat to some inner circle NDC men. How is it that the NDC leadership cannot see and sift this?

Some generations before us have vilified Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of the republic and did all that they could until he was overthrown in the 1966 coup d’état. Today we are worshiping his ghost because the realities have made us all to believe we have lost a continental asset. The same is being done to former president Rawlings who has established the firm pedestal for the current democratic dispensation of our country, and which has become the yardstick for measuring democratic governance in the sub-region by some commentators. Whether we like it or not Rawlings deserves better. By recognising that, the party will gain a reciprocal benefit.

Those who are exacerbating this tension are the very people who think we can solve the problem by publicly hitting one side against the other. These people who are vilifying the former president Rawlings just because the wife wants to contest the sitting President should ask themselves what they would have done if it is some one else who is contesting the sitting president.

The argument that the sitting president should not be contested and that it has not happened anywhere must be critically examined. We are what we are as a country, struggling to set bigger examples for Africa, because we always think others should invent for us to replicate or copy. We have never thought of setting the example for others to emulate. Many are those who agree with the former President on some key issues but fall short of supporting her wife’s bid. But they have not resorted to a public mud-slinging against the personality of Rawlings. Clearly they put the party’s interest first. How has this proved so elusive to the loud radio mouths associated with the NDC?

Why don’t we embrace this as a way of deepening our internal democracy and allow our delegates to decide who leads the party to the 2012 general election?

God bless Ghana, a country whose people has entrusted its destiny in the NDC’s hands. We dare fail not our people.

It is time for introspection!

By: Alexander Bediako and Kofi Adoli, UK.