NPP Leadership, Please Respect Party Members

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) was so attractive and principled during the era of B.J. da Rocha, Agyenim Boateng, Dan Botwe and others. During that time, the Party was not for some individuals, but it was for all.

In governance, President Kufuor showed how elders should conduct themselves by forging more unity within the party in his choice of appointees.

Then in October 2015, there was a full-blown out dictatorship when Paul Afoko, Sammy Crabbe and Kwabena Agyapong, National Chairman, 2^nd Vice National Chairman and General Secretary, respectively, were thrown out of office with indefinite suspension. Today, the eleven charges against Afoko have still not been made known to the Party, only that we are told he was conniving with the NDC to make sure the NPP loses the 2016 General Elections. Evidence prevails that it was the solid grassroot structures laid out by the Afoko administration that contributed to the NPP victory with 169 seats in Parliament in 2016.

Since then, NPP has not had any strong national chairman to lead the party. So, with weak structures coupled with the imposition of parliamentary candidates on the constituencies, the NPP lost thirty-two seats in Parliament in 2020. A committee was set-up, led by Hon Osafo Marfo to conduct research into what happened. The report was submitted to leadership who chose to keep it away from party members, because it was too explosive to read.

The same mistakes that made the NPP drop seats in Parliament in 2020 were repeated and there was further drop of, forty-nine seats in Parliament.

Another committee was set-up, this time headed by Prof. Mike Ocquaye and again when the report was ready, leadership, arrogantly told members that this one too, cannot be sighted. So, what was the reason for the gathering of information on why the NPP performed abysmally in the 2024 General Election?

As NPP members were recovering from this abuse of rights, the leadership came out requesting that members must make recommendations for amendments of the Party’s constitution.

Anyway, that is also important, but what is the guarantee that when party members come out again with recommendations, they would not be kept secret? What is the guarantee that the national executives and powers-that-be, will not push in their personal proposals and amend the constitution to suit their selfish desires?

If the executives, seriously want to amend the constitution, then what they should know is that generally, the Party’s laws must support a party for the people, by the people and of the people, not an oligarchy. Every member should have equal stake in the Party and most importantly, no single person or group of people must hijack the Party. Measures must be taken, so as not to impose officers and candidates on the Party.

Former General Secretary, Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, has come out with three proposals for the amendment of the Party’s Constitution. He is proposing, 1). Expansion of the Electoral College to include all past party officers and former MPs. 2). Presidential Primaries should be held first before any other internal elections and 3). Abolishing of the Super Delegates Congress.

I agree with him on the expansion of the Electoral College, to include past officers and former MPs. However, I will also add all former government appointees. Such people contribute immensely for the growth of the party and cannot just be discarded.

With the presidential primaries, to be conducted first, I have a slight problem, here.  After the flag bearer is elected, he or she could find an appealing way, even without using money, of presenting preferred people to the Electoral College and most probably, all or most offices would be occupied with members from the flag bearer’s camp. And the Party may have more qualified and principled people, overlooked.

With an expanded Electoral College, voting from bottom up, would put the proper people into office and when the flag bearer comes in later, he or she would have a very qualified and principled team to work with.

On the Super Delegates Congress, I support Kwabena on its abolishing. I have always been against it, because to me, it can pose problems for the party. We said with two thousand people electing our flag bearer, can easily be manipulated, so we expanded the college to over 150,000 and then set up some Super Delegates Congress with less than one thousand members to choose five people who they think should be flag bearer. Is this rational?

What if someone with so much wealth, descends on these super delegates and influence them to vote out an aspirant who can win the presidential elections? Did we go or did we come? The Super Delegates Congress is just an irrelevant group of people. It was only formed to make sure that in the midst of democracy there is autocracy. One single party member who wants to hijack the party could start by using the Super Delegates Congress.

In all this, I will respectfully demand that the Party hierarchy must release both the 2020 and 2024 committee reports on the party’s poor performances for members to study and discuss. With the abysmal performance in 2024, it showed that those leading the party do not have what it takes, to solve NPP’s problems. Leadership must accord members, some respect.

Hon. Daniel Dugan

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s stance.

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