Philip Langdon Is Wrong About NPP; Here Is Why

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Dec. 12, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]

He may, indeed, be a “leading member” of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), but it is quite clear that there are a few significant details about the operations and workings of Ghana’s largest and most progressive political party that he needs to learn. The fact that he chose to air his views about the ongoing suspension of several key administrative figures of the New Patriotic Party on Accra-based Radio Gold, a passionately and unabashedly partisan and National Democratic Congress-leaning media organization, tells us more about the critic than the actual happenings within the New Patriotic Party of which Mr. Philip Langdon claims to be a bona fide and leading member.

Even more significant ought to be underscored the fact that the ongoing disciplinary measures being meted by both the NPP-Disciplinary Committee and the Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) are not a frivolous contest of wills and/or personalities, as the critic would have his audiences believe (See “Suspensions Won’t Stop Troubles in NPP – Philip Langdon” Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/12/15). What we have here is an exercise aimed at making the most modern and ideologically progressive political party in the country viable, healthy and administratively cohesive enough to have the requisite fighting chance at the 2016 General Election. Mr. Langdon rather unfortunately has chosen to reduce this necessary therapeutic exercise to an orgiastic contest of personalities.

A striking case in point is when the critic talks about having recently attended a funeral in Cape Coast with Mr. Paul A. Afoko and having witnessed a remarkable number of people – presumably party members, supporters and sympathizers – congregate around the indefinitely suspended NPP National Chairman. In reality, what Mr. Langdon and those in the party who reason like him ought to be focused upon, and the reasons for which the hands of the operatives of the NPP-Disciplinary Committee and the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) were forced to undertake the legitimate actions which culminated in the suspensions of Messrs. Afoko, Agyepong and Crabbe, are the very forensically airtight grievances upon which such decisions were squarely based.

Unfortunately, it is quite obvious here that Mr. Langdon, as gleaned from his public remarks on the issue, is far less interested in party discipline and the administrative competence and viability of these key operatives at party headquarters, than the merely incidental fact of the identities of the personalities condignly, or deservedly, subjected to the rules of proper engagement and good moral and productive conduct, if the New Patriotic Party is to regain its pre-2000 strength and access to the Jubilee-Flagstaff House, in order to significantly facilitate improvement in the quality of the lives of ordinary Ghanaians. Put another way, the disciplinary measures taken against the Big-Three Rebels have far more to do with what is right administratively savvy for the New Patriotic Party, and the country at large, than the mere fact of who is being shown the exit out of the party’s Asylum Down headquarters.

Of course, we don’t live in a perfect universe, and so the very idea that merely suspending the so-called Big Three would not bring a cessation to the sort of internecine hostilities that culminated in such suspensions, in the first place, is neither here nor there. Indeed, if he were a progressive “leading member” of the New Patriotic Party, Mr. Langdon would be more concerned about helping the party leadership find an effective method of clinching a resounding victory come Election 2016, than distractively worrying about which suspended party operative has what amount of following. The fact of the matter is you simply cannot have a bunch of moral and psychological basket cases and cynical scofflaws managing the affairs and determining the destiny of any serious political party anywhere in the free and civilized world, and hope for positive results.

How, for instance, can any well-meaning Ghanaian respect any political party whose National Chairman, General-Secretary and Second-Vice Chairman have absolutely no respect for the most important regulatory and/or authoritative bodies of the same party? And not only that, but whose topmost administrators also have absolutely no qualms about publicly insulting the intelligence and integrity of the most respectable and distinguished members and leaders of the same party?

The stark fact of the matter is that Messrs. Afoko, Agyepong and Crabbe flatly and roundly rejected the mandates afforded them by congressional delegates, when they conspired to literally defecate and actually defecated with reckless abandon in the courtyard of the New Patriotic Party, in full frontal view of both party faithful and the decent citizenry of the country at large. And one has a hard time understanding why party stalwarts like Mr. Langdon should be crying foul and cursing at the good fortunes of the very party whose best interests they claim to represent.