Saturday 13th June should be a day when all those NPP MPs whether first timers or old timers should be sent packing if, in your opinion, they have not been up to the job. I am making this call in response to the nonsense that is being spewed from a faction in the party for first time MPs and sitting MPs in general to be protected. This is communist-style sacrilege! The NPP tradition is built on performance and nothing else. We have no room for protecting and fostering first time MPs if they have not delivered. Nowhere in the agreement when we sent you to parliament was it specified that you can be useless and yet still be an MP. Same applies to long-serving MPs. To do so gives ammunition to the NDC and worse still, strikes a blow at the very heart of the Danquah-Busia tradition.
When our great leader Joseph Boakye Danquah realised he was disconnected from the sentiments of voters in 1960 he relinquished leadership, after just one attempt to be president, and took the fight to the CPP in the courts. He left us with probably the most-cited case in the Ghana courts today, the case in which he defended Baffour Osei Akoto from the Preventive Detention Act which the judges refer to regularly today. Even though Danquah lost the case, given the reverence which his arguments on the day now command, he won the battle for the hearts and minds of our judges and thus struck a major blow for liberty of all the people and positioned our party as the major force for civil liberties in Ghana! The point then is that if Danquah realised his performance was not up to scratch at the polls and stepped aside on his own accord for a struggle in a different arena, why on earth should we retain the MP for the constituency of Kwaseasem if that MP has done nothing to advance the Danquah-Busia agenda?
Second, a dangerous concept is entering our party on the back of this call. We will overlook mediocrity; we will overlook the fact that you are costing us votes and we will keep you because the current influential members in the party are calling for this! Never! Never!! Never!!! KA Busia laid the groundwork for our current constitutional dispensation – bill of rights, multi-partyism, strong local government, non-interference in chieftaincy etc on the back of his excellence as a scholar and politician. He did not ask for protection for whatever reason as he went through his political career. Same argument applies to when Danquah, with Pa Grant and others formed the UGCC; they said nothing about the British government protecting it as the sole political party! When Prof Adu Boahen contested the leadership in 1995 I did not hear a word in support of protecting him! He lost, we chose Kufuor and the rest is a pleasant history in our party’s struggle to build a prosperous Ghana.
Thus I am appealing to all the delegates to strike down the abomination called protection. Judge the MPs on their records in Parliament, the constituency and nowhere else. If your MP has been a good one, has championed our causes, has contributed to the constituency and looks like he/she can add to our votes that are fast vanishing across the country since Akufo Addo became presidential candidate then by all means, elect that person whether new or old. Otherwise I call on you to fertilize the Danquah-Busia tradition with the ashes of any MP who has not been good enough, who is divisive, and who is a vote loser
