* There are strong arguments to suggest and conclude that the 2008 CPP Presidential candidate, Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom is closing up to the climax of the end of his political career before 2012. Nduom has remained in the minds of many people as the most inconsistent and confused political figure in Ghana, today. Here is the man who recently announced through his campaign team that he was going to take “recoil” for a while and even directed that the media stop referring him as a CPP presidential aspirant but suddenly he is heaping a media campaigns to finalize his political fate in the CPP. This article will therefore aim at presenting an objective and vivid political picture of a man whose deepest conviction is to become the President of Ghana in 2012 on a no party platform, irrespective of any scientific socialist ideology.
The latest of Nduom which has caused widened public perception about his politically confusion has been the recent unambiguous media reports of his intention to contest in the 2012 Presidential race as an independent candidate. The *Daily Graphic* described his move as a hint to contest as independent candidate in 2012 (see: http://www.graphic.com.gh/news/page.php?news=17512&title=Nduom%20To%20Contest%20As%20Independent%20Candidate%20In%202012?). Graphic stated he “*has dropped a hint of his intention to quit the party [CPP] and contest the 2012 presidential election on a different platform. To prepare the grounds for his next move, Dr Nduom has urged men and women who share in his aspirations to help him put together presidential and parliamentary campaign teams, other than the CPP, in the 10 regions and 230 constituencies for the 2012 elections…. Dr Nduom has decided that it is time for collective action to create a new political order that is national in character and one which is different from what exist today*…. Graphic further reported* that “as the first sign of breaking his cord from the CPP, some people from the Nduom campaign team were seen, just after the announcement, removing all the CPP flags on the road that leads to Dr Nduom’s Coconut Groove Hotel*.”
There is certainly one statement that seals all media attention for which Nduom and his communication team seems to be benefitting, which is that, Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom is ready to quit the CPP and form his own political party only for the sake of 2012 presidential contest. Even to affirm his gross disenchantment with the CPP and his loss of confidence in the party to promote his selfish bid, his campaign team also told Citi News that he does not find the CPP as a “strong vehicle” to help him win presidential power in 2012. Can Nduom tell our beloved CPP members what is the strong vehicle to help him win presidential power, since he no longer sees that strength in the CPP? According to online sources, Nduom’s spokesperson Richmond Keelson had told Citi News that Dr Nduom and his team are therefore striving to get Ghanaians to start believing in Dr Nduom’s personality as a presidential candidate rather than see him as the representative of the CPP (Visit: http://www.ghanatoghana.com/Ghanahomepage/cpp-youth-paa-kwesi-nduom-popular-ashanti-region )
One of the popular online news link, myjoyonline.com also reported an interview with Nduom’s head of communication, Mr. Richmond Lamptey, in a news story “*Independent or not; Nduom to declare before January” *on December 19th 2011, stressing that the constitution does not require one to be associated with a political party to contest a national election.
They quoted Nduom’s communication head, saying that “he is the only one who can say that [he is breaking off from the CPP] and he will do so hopefully before this year ends.” Let me refer readers to some of interesting arguments presented when initial news was made that Nduom took first step to leave the CPP during the early month of October this year. For the first time his critic had described his decision to leave the CPP has the most scientific political step he has ever taken since joining politics and somehow progressive than the one he made to campaign for Kuffour in 2004 and perhaps better than his alleged agreement with the NPP to dissolve the CPP into their party.
The fundamental question then was what could be chasing a man away from the party he claims to be its only savior? Readers eventually attributed answers to possibly the outcome of the just ended delegate’s congress where his strongest and favourate candidate, Ladi Nylander, was lashed bitterly by Hon Samia Yaba Nkrumah’ the national chairperson and leader of the party; the contents of leaked US diplomatic cables and the continuous uncontested allegations by the out gone youth organiser, Kabila, against him.
Indeed Kwesi Nduom must clarify some few questions. Why will a man who some years ago was the flag-bearer of the CPP, so called chief financier of the party, spokesperson on finance and governance, commission a committee which reported that he is viable to contest the 2012 elections on the ticket of the CPP and initially accepted to contest, then all of a sudden changes his mind that he is no longer contesting 2012 on the ticket of the party. Was it after the humiliating wikileaks reports that established that he stole the last CPP national elections and that the true mandate of the people did not reflect by using money and inducement to procure victory?
We would recollect that the leadership of the CPP maintained not to create austere conditions in the party for Kwesi Nduom to dictate what happens in the party. The national executive promised to work hard to make the CPP attractive to attract the relevant funding from her ordinary members who want to see a progressive change in the politics of Ghana, not a mole of the NPP pretending to be an Nkrumaist.
The newly discovered answers to the question as to what could be chasing a man away from the party he claims to be its only savior are the recent avalanche of criticism for allegedly inciting various groups across the country to clamour for an early congress, the party’s leader Hon. Samia Nkrumah threatening to expel him from the party if he continued what she described as Dr Nduom’s “nonsense” and the party’s general Secretary Ivor Greenstreet and other executives also singled out Dr Nduom as the sole cause of disunity in the party. Additional answers also include the popular condemnation for ignoring party structures and the use of his family and cronies to run party business during the 2008 general elections the leaked US cables. Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom’s must be feeling a certain discomfort in the CPP and therefore trying to exit by possibly re-loading his Movement for Social Justice for 2012.
Even though many sees Nduom’s attempt to form a new political party by plotting to quit the CPP and engaging a few recruited young volunteers whose political affiliations haven’t been screened and secured, his new move smacks of a bad rehearsal of how Dr. Kwame Nkrumah seceded from the Danquah-Busia’s UGCC and used the youth organisation, CYO, to form the basis of the CPP. It is so regretful that Nduom will go by this strategy when new competing political factors have come into play outside the CPP, the NDC and the NPP.
Firstly, it is historically significant and undisputed that the object of change Dr. Kwame Nkrumah sort whiles studying in U.S was colonialism. His passionate desire was not to become the President of Ghana and not even to the extent by some crazy methodical calculations towards independent-1957 but with greatest of honesty and objectivity to purposely smoke and weed out Colonialism and Neo-colonialism that have shaped and driven our country by naked-mercantile capitalism for a long period. It was this passionate desire of Nkrumah that made him to directly confront the harsh economic and political realities of colonial Ghana and Africa in the 1950’s. Nkrumah best clarified the path of the anti-colonial struggle for Ghanaians and later made Ghanaians to embrace his leadership qualities. People therefore rallied behind him for the object purpose of defeating colonialism and private capitalism. In the case of Nduom, it has consistently been portrayed by his spokespersons that for a person to have a deep sense of ideology and a practical correlation of that ideology remain secondary and not primary to resolving the concrete harsh economic condition facing the people of Ghana. The primacy of one having comprehended scientific socialist thought of the CPP by deed and conviction remain as the first individual quality expected from any person interested in leading the party. Nduomm fall short of this revolutionary qualities and certainly needs an exit.
Moreover, recent reports of Nduom to contest as an independent candidate goes to first distort the historical playback he is trying to play as we prepare for 2012. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was described as a verandah boy because of a close organizational life with the oppressed class of the Ghanaian economy. Progressives described Nkrumah’s act as a class suicide. Unlike Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Nduom is described by many people to be drawing his energy from the elite private-business class who form a small section of our society. Did he actually disrespect the rights of some workers in his private-profiteering bank to the extent that the bank was hurled to the national labour commission? The other questions which might lead one to confirm this popular claim about Nduom not to be a true CPP man to lead the party for 2012 includes the following. Why did he associate himself in a neo-colonial crusade in the early 1990’s to weaken the country’s hard-built state enterprises by fixing state enterprises appropriately for divestiture which consequentially led to the famous serious fraud report on allegations investigated at the State Enterprise Commission, wherein roughly 51 state enterprises were plunged for divestiture - something that endorses Imperialist control of Ghana’s economy? What might have driven his mind to assist the Kuffuor administration to formulate the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) which anchored on the private-sector engine of growth framework- a sharp deviation of Nkrumaism which did not transform the country? Why would Nduom be so much involved in projecting a deep-seated Danquah Busia development policy which springs from a neo-capitalist ideological framework? Thereafter he should have thought to remain in NPP and perhaps launched his possibility to become Ghana’s first President on an independent candidate. Why would he persistently exploit the Convention Peoples Party for his so-called uncooked historic-politico engineering? Is it true that he was travelling around the country forming what was called The Movement, providing cards and registering few innocent Ghanaians recruited not for the sake of the CPP but his presidential ambition?
The Convention Peoples Party, for that matter Nkrumaism, is fundamentally opposed to actions and thinking that are born on the basis of achieving a dominant private-sector and individualistic political character of our economy and politics, respectively, where everything is done for profit-for–its-own-sake. So we can establish that Nduom may be politically ignorant of the knowledge of the processes of scientific socialism and its analysis to a given political situation and how it could realistically be used to direct a society for a progressive development. Otherwise his inconsistencies and confusion only make him ridiculous and flippant before the public especially when the seeds of the Samia-led CPP leadership have begun to germinate positive results.
* * *Kweku Dadzie* * * *CPP Ablekuma South*
