Protecting the Democratic Culture of the NPP

By Samuel Adjei Sarfo
Attorney and Counselor at Law

The recent New Patriotic Party (NPP) parliamentary primaries once again affirmed the party’s strong democratic credentials in lucid terms. But events leading up to it and immediately thereafter also showed the ugly under-belly of political scheming and intrigue, and the threats our inchoate democracy face from within our own party. There was too much hullabaloo about the need to tinker with the democratic process to give some advantage to some incumbent MP’s. Elsewhere, there was total breakdown of law and order as dissatisfied supporters went on rampage against other factions. This evidenced a crass orientation to violence and a lack of commitment to the democratic principle hitherto well-known only to the NDC, and unknown in the NPP.
The NPP rose out of the UP tradition which is a mighty scion of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo tradition. The latter tradition was founded upon strong democratic principles which initially undergirded the independence struggle of the country Ghana. Indeed, Dr. J.B. Danquah, Prof. K.A. Busia, King S.D. Dombo and many others envisaged, in their quest for Ghana’s independence, a strong and democratic country in which true freedom and justice would prevail, and the dignity and human rights of all citizens would be guaranteed. Their commitment to peace was untrammeled, and even in their quest to wrest power from the colonialists, they chose the path of non-violent negotiation and not confrontation.

But when Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was invited from abroad to join the struggle and worked his way to become president, the fundamental principles of freedom and justice and the dignity of the human person and the peaceful co-existence of Ghanaians were all eroded or simply thrown overboard. The man interrupted the original notions of independence and democracy and imposed a one party state upon the nation, with himself as life president vested with the power to incarcerate citizens without trial. At the apex of his rule, the whole nation lived in fear, and a loud silence and despondency settled on the land. Nkrumah’s overthrow in 1966 released the greatest euphoria in the history of the nation as it began to trudge through its problems to establish a difficult regimen of democratic dispensation.

As regards this nation’s long journey to its democratic destination and its concomitant interruptions by military adventurers, enough have been written and said, and there is nothing more to add. Except to note that the present NDC government is both the acorn and icon of Nkrumah’s dictatorship. And furthermore, as Nana Akuffo Addo himself has already opined in the preamble to the 1996 NPP manifesto, the NDC is a product of a coup d’etat, and that credential alone sufficiently explains its penchant for violence, dictatorship, inherent ineptitude, incipient corruption and impulsive and knee jerk reactions to the national problems. And that is why this party can never be entrusted as the guardian of the democratic dispensation. This is because this party tracks its ancestry to a military coup staged by a dictator who sought his inspiration and training from the original dictator, and it has no role in the upkeep of democracy in a free country such as ours.

But the point that has not yet been sufficiently discussed is that the NDC is indeed the true progeny of the Nkrumaist legacy and leadership tradition, having demonstrated throughout history its propensity for violence and distaste for the democratic culture. Couple this with its scandalous human rights record, its sense of entitlement to the national purse, its electoral fraudulence and patent cluelessness about governance, and you have a true template of the Nkrumah leadership. Now we all know also that the NDC prides itself as social democrats, an artificial ideological construct much akin to the nebulous concoction of Nkrumaism which is a grotesque hybrid of communism tampered with the social contract. Then also, it was the NDC government that insisted that Nkrumah is the sole founder of the Ghanaian state to the total occlusion of Danquah, Busia, Dombo and the many others, and declared as a holiday his date of birth which he himself never knew. The NDC has also sacralized, rationalized or propagandized the Nkrumaist legacy, going as far as building a mausoleum and a museum in the capital for that tyrannical leader.

Thus the true heirs of Nkrumah’s dictatorial philosophy is the NDC, and never the CPP. The CPP bears Nkrumah’s party name and has Nkrumah’s daughter as its chairman, and may have Nkrumah’s insignia of the lone cockerel, but that is where the story ends, seeing that the CPP has never had the power nor the resources to advance Nkrumah’s vision, will and policy the way the NDC has done. And this aforesaid policy of Nkrumah is appropriately defined by his dictatorship and ineptitude and corruption which would have hastened this country into a failed state had Nkrumah not been overthrown. That is why there cannot be a single shred of doubt that the heir to Nkrumah’s heritage is indeed the NDC, not the present still-born three percentile party called the CPP. And that is why the NDC still continues the work Nkrumah would have accomplished, that of maintaining a strong stranglehold on the country and running its economy aground.

But as far as pundits of the political theology are concerned, the greatest dichotomy between the NDC and NPP is how each party construes and pursues the democratic principle. No matter how the NDC tries to rebrand itself, it cannot be in denial of its origin, which is a coup d’etat concocted by an untrained and uncultivated mind and pushed by equally untrained and uncultivated citizens. Just as Nkrumah usurped the democratic fathers and planted the seeds of dictatorship, so did the NDC, through the political charlatan called J.J. Rawlings, usurp the democratic principles and founded the NDC. Just as Nkrumah imprisoned without trial, so did J.J. Rawlings. Just as Nkrumah violated the human rights by abjuring freedom of speech and the press and association, so did J.J. Rawlings. And just as Nkrumah sought to perpetuate his power, so did J.J. Rawlings. And as long as the party he formed exists, its penchant for dictatorship, ignorant policy and sheer corruption will also exist, seeing that one cannot decouple these evils from the Nkrumaist legacy to which the NDC is now legitimate heir. So the way forward is simply to vote the NDC out of power, and in the national interest, ensure that it remains perpetually out of power.

On our part, we of the NPP have never engaged in any dictatorial deviations nor incarcerated anybody without trial or imposed a one party government on this country or asked any leader to be life president. Thus, our commitment to democracy has remained steadfast from the very beginning. That is why we must never engage in any actions that will put question marks on our democratic credentials. Any action taken by anybody to disturb the democratic culture within the party ought to be seen as dislocating the very bones and fabric of the NPP and dishonoring the hallowed image of Danquah and the rest who resisted the oppressor’s rule and sacrificed their lives so that democracy will triumph in Ghana. And I say all this because of recent shameless posturing by certain key members to compromise democratic principles to feather the wings of their ambition. Consider the recently repealed decision made by the National Executive Committee conferring certain privileges on female MP’s in constituencies in which women hold the seats or requesting quotas for certain ethnic groups. Consider the recent calls by the minority leader for special protection against the legitimate challenge posed against his seat by certain others within his constituency. Then consider the ugly noises made by those who sought to disqualify their challengers or who called for some preferential treatment or advantages because they are for now the incumbent members of parliament……. When you consider all these, then consider what these people understand by the concept of democracy and their own inherent duty to protect it with their flesh and blood, just like J.B. Danquah and the rest did. And when you think about the hypocrisy and irony of their posturing, also think about the tune they would sing were they not secure in their elective positions, and had to contest like the rest to be elected in the primaries. Will they have been calling for special protection and privileges for sitting MP’s? And the fact of this logic pegged against their immoral persistence to gain undue advantage, is what must make us cringe in the threat posed by these people to the NPP’s strong democratic credentials.

All these people calling for special favors are not true democrats, and if they are, then they have no clue what true democracy means. They just take advantage of the democratic mantra where it suits them best and have no real understanding of the workings of the democratic culture. In effect, they are no different than Nkrumah and his dictatorial philosophy. Neither are they any different from the NDC which remains heir to Nkrumah’s iron rule and J.J. Rawlings’ fake revolution. Given the chance, these people will lead the party on to the slippery slope of dictatorship or at least to some form of oligarchy. Ironically, because a few of them did their work in some mediocre sense, they won the primaries anyway because of the very advantage of their incumbency; and now that they won through a just and fair process, they will be the first to reap the full benefits of their positions as both true democrats and credible winners. And now if they call for unity and reconciliation after winning fair and square, everybody will listen to them as being credible enough.
But it is the duty of patriotic citizens to prevent fraud from ever happening in the future. In future, these hijackers of democracy might still seek their comfort zone in some political fraud akin to that of Nkrumah and J.J. Rawlings, but we must be persistent in resisting their collective shenanigans as we would the oppressor’s rule. We must resist their desire to rig the vote and supplant the franchise in order to win. And if the sanctity of the vote is upheld and they lose, we must resist their attempt to cry foul and engage in long-winding actions to diminish our democracy. Finally, we must resist their invidious desire to destroy where they cannot win. We must re-educate, re-orient and re-convert them to the true tenets of democracy from which they appear to deviate and defer.
For on the day that NPP shirks its democratic principles, that will be the day when the party will morph into Nkrumah’s CPP and J.J. Rawlings’ NDC, and that is the day on which the Danquah-Busia-Dombo tradition will implode and become a shame and a by-word to the great fathers whose lifetime of struggle defines, inspires and shapes our notions of true democracy and confer on us who we are and what we stand for.

Samuel Adjei Sarfo, J.D., is a practicing attorney in Austin, Texas, USA. You can email him at [email protected]