The selection is on, but volunteerism is dying

The New Patriotic Party officially begins the selection/election of delegates for the National Congress today. The process for selecting 10 delegates from each of the 230 constituencies nationwide will end on Saturday December 8. All 36 eyes of the presidential candidates are now on the selection process.

Ensuring the integrity of the selection process is a cause for much anxiety. There are allegations of candidates or their agents hopping from constituency to constituency in an attempt to influence the selection process in their electoral favour. Without exception, that is what every serious candidate has been doing in the last couple of weeks and will intensify in doing for the next 10 days.

The rules do not frown on the art of influencing the nomination process. What the party speaks against is “undue influence.” Some constituencies already know who the ten delegates are. Some are using zonal heads as the six non-constituency officers in addition to the four constituency officers.

We are picking up hints of aggrieved voices who are threatening to kick up a storm because they were left out of the selection process. The usual sentiment is that many are complaining not so much because they want to be part of the occasion of nominating potentially the country’s next leader. They are aggrieved because they are missing out on what many consider to be the height of the ‘cocoa’ harvesting season.

Expectations are as high as a total amount of $10,000 can allegedly be earned in some cases per delegate. Whatever is on offer, what is certain is that for the next three weeks, the most important persons in the land will be the 2,300 constituency delegates who will be voting on Saturday December 22, 2007. Last year when The Statesman predicted that you would need at least $4 million to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate many though it was way off the mark. But, even some candidates who have slim chances of winning are expected to have spent so far over $2 million.

The question is this – how did it all get this crazy? It started, in our view, by a very tiny minority deciding that the only way they could win over the NPP was to buy it with cash. Thus, over the last couple of years some concentrated on making money the issue of their campaign. The effect of this is for all the others to also raise their game in mobilising funds.

The bottom line is that even those who are known to have made cash the main driver of their electioneering are the ones getting very worried. This is because those they thought would not be able to match them up in that department appear to be doing so.

But, what we have found out is that those with a message and political track record only have to pay a respectable fraction of what those with cash drivers are doing to keep the tradition, wisdom and integrity of the national congress insulated and intact.

Questions are being asked whether or not this is just a temporary aberration and that after this cash as a main factor in intra-party contests in the NPP would die a natural death. We only wish we could be that optimistic too. But, we know that the results of the congress night will be a rude and deserving reminder to not only the majority of aspirants but to the whole country that the NPP has never been for sale and will never be for sale. The greatest fear to our democracy is what this money politics does to the spirit that drives grassroots politics – volunteerism. You kill that you kill our fledgling democracy.