You're a true blue party man so what?

It may all sound peculiar to that large pool of non-NPP members of the voting public. But, core to the campaign message of a number of the presidential nominees of the New Patriotic Party is their 'true blue party man' credentials. They are appealing to party delegates to vote for an active party loyalist who has been with them through thick and thin; a person who was in the trenches with them.

This resonates among the rank and file who also appear to want a leader whom they can be confident of feeling their pause, also having their scars and hopefully better appreciating their cries for recognition.

Dan Botwe, Hackman Owusu-Agyemang, Nana Akufo-Addo, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, Kofi Apraku, and Jake Obestebi-Lamptey are on top of pushing this message. Others include Felix Owusu-Adjapong, Kwame Addo-Kufuor and Kwabena Agyepong. It may work well for intra-party competition.

But, the NPP is not only choosing a flagbearer. The race is for a man who has at least a 2:1 chance of becoming the next President of the Republic. And, what has a true blue party man to do with the cost of inflation and electricity? First, as hinted above, there is a purely internal reason why a true blue party man has become an attractive campaign slogan. The majority of NPP rank and file believe their sacrifices over the long period in opposition have neither been adequately rewarded nor duly recognised.

Linked to this is a highly emotive perception that some people with newly acquired membership cards are the ones enjoying the fruits of the old toilers' labour.

President Kufuor, of course, deserves, a lot of sympathy. After 30 years in opposition and inheriting national coffers a church mouse would even have rejected, there was only that many people he could possible satisfy without throwing the national economy and his own agenda of good effective governance into disequilibrium.

So the party rank and file are instinctively looking for a man they consider of their stock, who cam best utilise the lebensraum created by Kufuor to show ‘respect’.

But, beyond personal well-being, there is that collective memory of the party’s long history of struggle. The party feels more comfortable handing over its leadership to a person they know has a credible, tangible, forefront record of intimate political activism for the UP tradition.

They know such a person is likely to be more careful and responsible in maintaining power for the party and keeping the NDC way out of electoral coverage area.

There is a very national normative angle to this consideration - the history of the NPP is the history of Ghanaians’ struggle for freedom. For the most part of this nation’s 20th century political history, the Danquah-Busia-Domboists have been up there.

Starting from the United Gold Coast Convention era, the struggle of the tradition has been the struggle for, first, this country’s independence and subsequently against dictatorship and for the establishment and consolidation of liberal democracy.

A true blue party man is therefore a Ghanaian with a history of political intimacy with this country’s ancient and comtemporary quest for good and progressive governance. Qanawu’s point is that a true blue party man is as relevant to Ghanaians as he is relevant to NPP delegates.

Political parties play the role of mediating institutions between the governors and the governed, making the emphasis on a party loyalist more relevant to the calibre of Ghana’s next leader. Moreover, Qanawu will argue that Ghana’s democracy is better off not seeing political parties as merely election facilitators which provide candidates with ballot access. We should protect the sanctity of the party especially when in power as a way of protecting power itself. One of the NDC’s major problems has been the way they allowed the party formed out of government to remain just a subordinate appendage of the Rawlings regime before 2001. Political scientists speak of two paradigms that have emerged to define political parties: the rational-efficient model and the responsible parties model. The rational-efficient model puts more premiums on the parties’ electoral activities at the expense of virtually all other functions, thereby making victory in elections the principal raison d’etre for the party establishment. If you allow it to thrive in a democratic environment then you create more and more room for the spread of the pool of floating voters.

On the other hand is the responsible parties model, which is what some in the NPP intelligentsia are passionately seeking to protect and maintain. In 1950, the American Political Science Association’s Committee on Political Parties defined it in a manner which remains pertinently true to the Ghanaian situation today: An effective party system requires, first, that the parties are able to bring forth programs to which they commit themselves and, second, that the parties possess sufficient internal cohesion to carry out these programs. Third, achieving party unity matters because (1) it gives voters a clear choice in election campaigns; (2) it gives the winning political party a mandate for governing; and (3) it ensures the party as the likely instrument whereby voters can make a legal revolution.

Qanawu has argued before that in choosing the next presidential candidate of the NPP ‘the basic requirement is a deep and intimate appreciation of this country’s history to better inform in the mind of the next leader the need to maintain peace, stability and security. All other things, such as accelerated development, can be added unto thee.’ One aspirant is always quick to remind delegates not to discount the influence of President Kufuor’s own painful political experience and history to his remarkable success in maintaining the peace, security and stability upon which he is diligently accelerating the nation’s socio-economic growth. After less than 15 years into the Fourth Republic, it would be complacent to, in the words of Alan Kyerematen, "experiment" with the succession race. It is crucial that Kufuor’s successor come to the job having shared, to some degree, the incumbent’s mightily intimate experience with this country’s past. That person may not be a "three-time political prison graduate" like Kufuor. That person may not have been in frontline politics for 40 years like Kufuor but he must be on top of the class of experienced candidates on the ballot paper.

Thabo Mbeki’s party also goes to congress next month in a leadership contest that observers say threatens the cohesion of the party. South Africa, after years of apartheid opted for the man who represented the black struggle in the country, Nelson Mandela. After him, was Thabo Mbeki. Both Thabo’s parents were ANC activists.

He joined the Youth League at 14 and quickly became active in student politics. He played a prominent role in building the youth and student sections of the ANC in exile, undergoing military training in the Soviet Union. From 1989 Mbeki headed the ANC Department of International Affairs, and was a key figure in the ANC’s negotiations with the former government until Mandela chose him as one of his two deputy presidents. Mbeki’s own former deputy and now his main rival for the control of the ANC is Jacob Zuma. Zuma joined the ANC at 17. Arrested in 1963, he suffered ten years’ imprisonment on Robben Island. After his release, Zuma helped set up an underground ANC organisation in KwaZulu-Natal before escaping to Swaziland in 1974. There, he met Mbeki and the two started to work together. Mbeki backed Zuma’s appointment as head of ANC intelligence, uncovering apartheid spies; the department sometimes wrongly accused – and executed – loyal members. His popularity with the grassroots, despite renewed prospects of corruption charges around his neck, attests to his historical links with them during the struggle. Also in the succession race for both the party’s presidency in December and the country’s presidency next year is 54-year-old charismatic Mosiam Gabriel Sexwale, commonly known as Tokyo Sexwale because of his martial art prowess. This South African business tycoon’s bid for the leadership is legitimised not by his dough but by his exemplary histort in anti-apartheid activism. In the early 1970s he shared Robben Island with figures like Madiba. The next prospective leader is another man in his fifties but who also sacrificed his youth for the anti-apartheid struggle. Cyril Ramaphosa, 55, became ANC general secretary in 1991 after building the biggest and most powerful trade union in the country, the National Union of Mineworkers. This skilful and formidable negotiator, lawyer and black consciousness activist was detained in 1974 and held in solitary confinement for 11 months for his role in the organisation of pro-Frelimo rallies. In 1976 he was detained for a second time, and held for six months. The gist of this is that ever since the American independence in 1789, various countries coming out of an undemocratic past tend to entrust the reigns of power into the hands of men and women who were very instrumental in winning that freedom. It was not for nothing that the first four Presidents of Independent America (from 1789-1817) were all founding fathers. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. James Monroe, the fifth President (1817-1825), a close ally of Jefferson, was a diplomat who played a leading role in the War of 1812 as secretary of war and later secretary of state under James Madison. His intimate knowledge of the cost of instability influenced him to profess what became known as the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, which defined US opposition to European interference. John Quincy Adams, the sixth US President, did not win only because he was the son of President John Adams, as a most famous diplomat he was involved in many international negotiations towards the consolidation of the US, and for formulating the Monroe Doctrine. Gen Andrew Jackson, the seventh US President, was the commander of the American forces at the decisive secession-threatening Battle of New Orleans (1815). He’s also a founder of the modern Democratic Party. The situation was not that different with the Fourth Republic of France after World War II. Jules-Vincent Auriol, the first post-war French president was instrumental in the resistance movement. In 1940, he voted against the extraordinary powers given to Prime Minister Philippe Pétain that led to the fatal Nazi-backed Vichy regime. His reward was to be placed under house arrest, later escaping to join the French Resistance in October 1942. Next was René Jules Gustave Coty, whose was a typical model of how not to use a person without intimate experience of the immediate struggle as leader. He was the second and last president under the short-lived French Fourth Republic, which was killed in 1959. Yes, he volunteered for the army in the First World War, but remained relatively inactive during World War II only to be quickly rehabilitated after the war. His weak presidency was troubled by the political instability of the Fourth Republic, the Algerian question, and Indochina crisis, all of which critics contended he was ill-equipped to deal with. He needed Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle to rescue him. Général de Gaulle was the leader of the Free French government-in-exile. He established the Fifth Republic which he sustained and used that to build an alliance with the old enemy, Germany, to grow what is now the European Union. According to de Gaulle, the head of state should represent "the spirit of the nation" to the nation itself and to the world: "une certaine idée de la France" (a certain idea of France). As he departed the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked if the American Founders had created a monarchy or a republic. "A republic," he famously replied, "if you can keep it." And, to ensure they keep it, the leadership was extremely careful about the historical grounding of presidential candidates. So, when NPP presidential aspirants speak of a true blue party man they mean a person who has intimate knowledge of the party’s years of struggle, which invariably translates into all the decades of battles waged by Ghanaians against dictatorship and for multi-party democracy. On March 9, 1959, Joseph Boakye Danquah said: "Ghana has a mission. She is the exempler of Africa’s idea of freedom and democracy." That mission, Ghanaians, is very much on today.