Busia-Danquah-Dombo tradition is anti-democratic and violent

The NPP prouds itself as a chip of the block of the Busia-Danquah-Dombo (BDD) tradition. What NPP does not tell Ghanaians is that this tradition is anti-democratic and has a tendency to use violence to achieve its selfish ends.

The Busia-Danquah-Dombo tradition has paraded on the Ghanaian political scene under various names as Northern People’s Party led by S. D. Dombo; Ghana Congress Party with Busia, Obetsibi-Lamptey and Danquah among its leaders; Togolese Congress Party with S. G. Antor as its leader; National Liberation Movement (matemeho) with Busia, R. R. Amponsah, Victor Owusu, J. A. Kufuor among its leaders; UP (an amalgamation of Dombo’s NPP, the Busia-led NLM and S. G. Antor’s TCP) with Da Rocha, R. R. Amponsah, Danquah, Busia, Kwesi Lamptey, Obetsibi, Dombo, E. Akufo-Addo and Victor Owusu among its leaders; Progress Party with Busia, William Ofori Atta, E. Akufo-Adddo, Victor Owusu, R. R. Amponsah, Haruna Esseku, Prof. F. T. Sai, and J. A. Kufuor among its leaders.

The Busia-Danquah-Dombo tradition is anti-democratic. At its inception in the immediate post-WWII politics in Ghana, the Busia-Danquah-Dombo tradition did not believe in the use of universal adult suffrage through the ballot box to elect representatives to rule the country. The BDD wanted chiefs to appoint representatives to the national legislative assembly. At its intransigent insistence and in cahoots with colonial administration, the first national legislative assembly of 1951 consisted of appointed and elected members. When the CPP emerged as the winner of the ballot box process, the BDD resorted to federalism, separation (matemeho) and violence to have its way of excluding the youthful CPP, nkwankwaa and merantee (the natural opponents of the chiefs) from the governance of the country. The merantee, nkwankwaa and the youth were fighting against the chiefs who were conniving with the British through the Native Authority system of indirect rule to perpetuate colonial rule. The nefarious indirect rule in which the chiefs were not held accountable to the people had J. B. Danquah as its prominent supporter. When Nkrumah mobilized the youth and progressive thinking people to agitate for the end of the colonial rule, he became a hated man because he sought to expand the democratization of governance of the country to include the youth and the non-royal people – the so-called verandah boys. With formation of CPP and subsequent success of the CPP in 1951, 1954 and 1956 elections, J. B. Danquah, K. A. Busia, and their self-centered nation wreckers, introduced into Ghana politics violence because they could not stand Nkrumah and the CPP winning the hearts of the populace.

The Busia-Danquah-Dombo escalated violence in the country because, as they put it in their own words, they wanted to make Ghana “ungovernable.” Kumasi was literally turned into a “war zone” and a “no-go area” for the CPP between 1954 and 1956. The violence from the Busia-Danquah-Dombo front escalated in the 1960s until the eventual violent overthrow of Nkrumah and the CPP in 1966. The following is a short list of some of acts of violence and terrorism of the Busia-Danquah-Dombo tradition:

1. In 1958, there was a plot to assassinate Nkrumah at the airport and then overthrow the CPP government as Nkrumah was about to leave for a state visit to India. The plot was discovered and the plotters were arrested.

2. On July 7, 1961, two bombs exploded in Accra, one wrecking Nkrumah’s statue in front of the Parliament House.

3. In September 1961, there was a conspiracy among the senior Ghanaian military officers, but the plot collapsed because of the death of the chief conspirator Brigadier General Joseph E. Michel in an airplane crash.

4. On August 1, 1962, as Nkrumah was returning from a state visit to Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), and had gotten out of his car to speak to the school children in the crowd that had gathered to greet him at Kulungungu, a bomb contained in a bouquet carried to him by a schoolgirl, exploded; it killed several school children and injured many others. The victim’s bodies bled from cuts caused by the splinters from the bomb. Nkrumah sustained a serious injury but he refused to have any device to deaden his pain while the operation went on.

5. On September 9, 1962, another bomb exploded near the Flagstaff House, where the Ghana Young Pioneers Orchestra Band was entertaining the audience to modern Ghanaian Music. The explosion killed one person and injured many others.

6. On September 18, 1962, two bombs exploded in Accra killing and injuring many people. One of these bomb blasts occurred in Lucas House in Accra, where nine children fell dead on the spot with their intestines gushed out of their bodies.

7. September 20, 1962, two bombs exploded in Accra, killing and injuring several people.

8. On September 22, 1962, there was another bomb explosion in Accra.

9. On January 11, 1963, another bomb exploded at a CPP rally at the Accra Sports Stadium shortly after Nkrumah had left the scene. This explosion killed over twenty people and more than four hundred people were injured; among the victims were children of the Young Pioneer movement.

10. January 1, 1964, a police officer, Seth Ametewe, was posted on guard duty at the Flagstaff House to assassinate Nkrumah. His five shots missed Nkrumah, but succeeded in killing his personal security officer, Sgt. Salifu Dagarti.

The question is: what government would permit these primitive and terrorist methods of attack by an opposing political party? In the light of these senseless, barbaric bomb attacks against the founder of Ghana, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the Young Pioneers and other school children, how was the CPP government going to protect and develop the newly independent State of Ghana? The main reason for the repeated bomb attacks against the Ghana Young Pioneers was that Nkrumah’s enemies saw in the Ghana Young Pioneers movement the source of permanent power if allowed to last for at least one generation or 35 years. At any rate, given Dr. J. B. Danquah’s hostility towards the democratic process and given his open statement during the Jackson Commission of 1958 indicating that the laws of Ghana did not apply to him, was it surprising that he resorted to undemocratic and violent methods?

The violent nature of the Busia-Danquah-Dombo tradition has manifested itself in a number of atrocities directly perpetuated by the NPP or indirectly as the NPP administration has failed to curb these atrocities in recent years since NPP assumed power in 2001. The NPP had a tyrant called Edumaze as a regional minister for the Central Region. He did not only physically brutalized and intimidated the vulnerable. He also took the law into his own hands when he confiscated a taxi cab in Suhum in the Eastern Region and had it taken to Cape Coast in the Central Region because the taxi driver had crossed his motorcade.

Under the Kufuor administration, the Busia-Danquah-Dombo tradition has turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to atrocities meted out the Ya Naa, the Dagbon Paramount chief and his followers in 2001. The Paramount chief of Dagbon area in Ghana was killed alongside 40 of his subjects in a 12 hour firefight at his palace in Tamale. The Police and the Military were fully aware of the fighting going on. The regent was killed and his head was portrayed as a trophy in the streets of Tamale. No one has been held responsible for such atrocities.

In 2001 at the Accra Sports Stadium, 126 people were trampled to death in a stampede caused by trigger-happy police. This world’s worst atrocity at a sporting event did not result anyone being held accountable for it.

In 2004 Alhaji Mobilla, the CPP chairman of Tamale went to Tamale Police Station and was taken to a Military guardroom where he was beaten to death, YES BEATEN TO DEATH IN CUSTODY IN GHANA! The medical officer's report was clear, homicide, tortured to death! None of the guards at the Police Station or the Military Guardroom have been arrested or on trial for this heinous killing. This happened under the watch of so-called apostles of human rights. Apparently, Mobilla’s human rights were not important to Attorney General Akufo-Addo.

The brutal murder of 44 Ghanaians in the Gambia occurred on the watch of Akufo-Addo as the foreign minister. It was at this ministry that Akufo-Addo did nothing as Ghanaian passports were being smuggled and sold to non-Ghanaians.

The country has been plagued by contract killings and violent armed robberies. Ennim, President of Ashanti Journalists Association, was killed at Kumasi in a public place. Rokko Frimpong, a banker, was killed at Tema as he returned from work to his house. Land guards have been hacking people to death in Accra and the NPP administration has done nothing about these atrocities as the administration has failed to either curb or punish the perpetrators of these violent atrocities.

Within NPP’s own ranks there have been acts of violence at Bekwai, Suhum and Agogo. The NPP has had skirmishes with its political opponents at Gushiegu, Tamale; Odododiodio, Accra; and other places. The NPP has resorted to open voting buying to win the 2008 elections. This open vote buying was done at NPP rally at Kasoa. Attendants at the rally were given money. Some party functionaries in the rural areas have been given 2 million cedis($200) each and half-piece (six yards) cloth each. I know this to be true in the Assin areas of Manso and Fosu.

Another menace plaguing the country is the drug menace. Akufo-Addo, the NPP Presidential candidate, is believed to have ordered the reversal of the confiscation order that had been used to seize the properties of one R. Amankwah said to be related to Akufo-Addo. This de-confiscation occurred when Akufo-Addo was the Attorney General – the country’s chief law enforcing officer - in the NPP administration. This notorious drug trafficker, Amankwah has been arrested in Brazil. During Akufo-Addo’s watch as the Attorney General, three narcotic peddling people (Abenaa Foriwaa, Comfort Akua Amankwaa, and Ama Nyarkoa) NPP officers from Dzorwulu, Accra were arrested at the Accra International smuggling cocaine, but the authorities that be ordered the freeing of these three women party officers of the ruling NPP. We all know how the country was disgraced when a sitting NPP parliamentarian – Eric Amoateng - was arrested and later jailed in the United States for drug smuggling and drug trafficking. We witnessed the frantic efforts the NPP made to help Amoateng out of the US jail. For almost a year, Amoateng’s seat in parliament would not be declared vacant for re-election to fill that seat.

The NPP does not only have a violent streak in its nature, it isanti-democratic despite the noise the party has been making that it has ushered a “democratic dispensation” in the country since 2001. The Busia-Danquah-Dombo tradition are anti-democratic. At the very beginning of the foundation of what has become the modern nation-state of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah exposed these anti-democrats of the Busia-Danquah-Dombo as follows in a 1955 speech:

“In those days our opponents attacked us for believing the party system to be an indispensable instrument in the working of parliamentary democracy. In those days, when the youth, the workers, the farmers, the co-operative societies and the ex-servicemen, through the organization of the CPP were vigorously castigating imperialism and colonialism and were struggling to be free, our opponents chose to denounce us as a pack of ‘irresponsible and unruly verandah boys.’ They shamelessly allied themselves with the forces of imperialism and rejoiced at our misfortunes and difficulties.

“And yet when the very colonial power which has dominated us for the past hundred years now offers us our freedom and independence and tells us to make arrangements for it, some of our own Chiefs and disgruntled and disappointed politicians are doing their utmost to sabotage the very cause for which we have fought undaunted. I ask you: Are the suffering masses of this new Ghana of ours going to stand for that? The reason they adopt such tactics is because they fear democracy and the common man, and they try to camouflage such fears by undermining the party system and the parliamentary democracy we have been able to introduce into the country.” I have already in the earlier paragraphs alluded to Danquah’s hostility towards the democratic process and mentioned his open statement during the Jackson Commission of 1958 indicating that the laws of Ghana did not apply to him.

The anti-democratic nature of the Busia-Danquah-Dombo tradition became more evident during the administration of the Progress Party under the leadership of Busia. J. A. Kufuor was a deputy minister for foreign affairs and F. T. Sai was the minister of health in the Busia administration. Even though Busia prided himself as a democrat and wrote a book, “Democracy in Africa” his administration sought to dismantle the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS). His administration did dismantle the Trades Union Congress (TUC). NUGS and the TUC are two of the well-established civil society organizations in the country that facilitated the broadening of participation of the citizens in the democratic process.

The TUC was dismantled with the passage in parliament of a new labour act in 1971 – Act 383. On 13 September 1971, under a certificate of urgency, Parliament passed the Industrial R elations (Amendment) Act 1971 (Act 383) to replace the Industrial Relations Act 1965 (Act 229). The new Act dissolved the TUC with immediate effect and empowered the government to appoint a board of receivers to dispose of all the properties of the TUC. The new Act also abolished the check-off system for collecting membership dues to fund the TUC. This anti-labour, anti-democratic law has been re-introduced under the NPP administration as the Labour Act of 2003 (Act 651). The Act 653 has consolidated many laws, some dating from 1965. It also established the National Labour Commission to promote co-operation between Labour and Management and provide for effective dispute resolution.

The Labour Act of 2003, Act 651 – a throw- back to the 1971 Act 383 - presents a number of challenges for the democratic rights of organized labour. The attempt by ICU to break away from the TUC makes one wonder whether Act 651 is a throw-back to Act 383 of the Busia era that sought to break up organized labour in Ghana. The Health Workers Group (HWG) within the public health sector recently disassociated itself from the newly formed Health Workers Association of the Nation (HWAN) that identified itself as being aligned to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) at the Kasoa rally by the NPP.

The Labour of 2003, Act 651 has been enacted in a period when a number of new enterprises in the private sector, especially mining and the free enterprise zone companies are not keen on their workers forming or joining unions. Some of the new enterprises have resorted to outsourcing to private contractors aspects of their non-core activities. The non-core activities mostly outsourced include catering, transport, and security. For example, many privatized enterprises that used to run large fleets of buses for their workers now have outsourced such transportation to private contractors, rendering drivers and mechanics that ran the company buses redundant. The private contractors are usually not keen to have their workers join or form unions.

In a statement signed by the Public Affairs of the National Labour Commission (NLC) at a maiden forum of the Commission, areas in the Act 651 identified for amendment include sections of the law on unionization of workers, certification of trade unions as bargaining agents and termination of employment by employers. The NLC itself has been under-funded by the NPP administration since its establishment. Organized labour unions have indicated that in the ambiguous environment created by Act 651 some employers have behaved in manner that suggested that the rights of workers to unionize should be subject to the permission of the employer. This behavior of the employer could lead to worker frustration and strikes with dire consequences for the economy as a whole.

Some labour representatives also have argued that the NLC operation, seems to be directed at “fire fighting,” convening only when summoned by government to address a crisis, rather than dealing with long-term labour policy development. Other civil society activists see consultation as something done to fulfill donor requirements rather than of the government’s own free will. This consultation aspect of Act 651 does not enhance effective participation by citizens in the public policy process.

This is just a brief account of the anti-democratic and violent nature of the NPP – a chip from the old Busia-Danquah-Dombo block of matemeho, visionless, and selfish rogues.

We call on the voters in Ghana to vote NPP out of office. We urge voters to vote for CPP for a return to the path for Ghana’s political and economic emancipation.

Akwasi Prempeh may be reached at [email protected].