ALl is well that ends well

January 8,2008
All is well that ends well
By Kofi Akordor
Something is happening on our political landscape and I am wondering whether others have noticed it. I am referring to the growing tolerance and maturity being exhibited by the various political parties. Last month, December 2007, to be precise, the People’s National Convention (PNC), the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) went to congress to elect their presidential candidates and came out with flying colours. The NPP, in particular, surprised everybody, including itself, when it came out from the special delegates’ congress unscathed and stronger than before.
However, this trend was set in December 2006 when the National Democratic Congress (NDC) held its delegates congress at the University of Ghana to elect its flag bearer. The NDC has a history of violence at most of its congresses so when the party was gearing up for the December 2006 congress, many were very apprehensive and sceptical about the outcome.
Readers may remember that at the party’s congress in Koforidua in December 2005 to elect national officers, flesh was torn and blood oozed copiously, tearing the party into tatters. That acrimonious and violent congress led to the resignation of some key members of the party, including Dr Obed Asamoah, who had been defeated in the chairmanship race of the party. Later, together with other disenchanted members, he formed the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP).
That event was preceded by two other events which ended on sour notes. The first was in 2002, at the party’s congress at the Ghana International Trade Fair Centre to elect national executives. The party came out so heavily bruised that it could not garner the necessary strength to conduct its 2004 electioneering. The second was in 2003, at the congress at the University of Ghana to elect the flag bearer for the 2004 presidential elections.
If what happened at the trade fair centre a year earlier was a fight, Legon was a battle ground for war between supporters of Prof J.E. Atta Mills and Dr Kwesi Botchwey, the two contestants. That, and the 2002 episode, played a big role in the party’s defeat in 2004.
That was why the party’s 2006 congress was approached with caution and suspicion. Many thought the NDC would disintegrate further and possibly sound the death knell of the party, depending on the outcome. That never happened. “We shall not desert the party, we shall not form a new party and we shall throw our full weight behind Prof Mills to capture the presidential seat in 2008,” Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, the man who injected a lot of power into the contest and who was seen to be marshalling a lot of support among the youth, declared after the results had been announced.
All the candidates left the Legon campus pledging unity and support for the party and, with the blessing of Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings, always seen as the source of most of the confusion, the party came out intact and more solid than before.
The CPP congress, held at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi last December to elect its presidential candidate, was more exciting than those of previous years. This was apparent because of the entry into the race of stalwarts such as Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa, a former Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, and Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom, a business entrepreneur and a former minister in President J.A. Kufuor’s government. The two, together with Mr George Aggudey, Dr F.W.K. Akuffo and Dr Kwaku Osafo, brought some life into the CPP and gave some hope to its supporters.
However, the party which electrified the political scene last year was the NPP. With a record entry of 18 presidential aspirants, the party caught national attention, with many asking whether all those declaring their intention to contest for the flagbearership of the party were serious or not. Some believed that by the time nominations opened, a lot of the candidates would bow out honourably and leave the field for, say, five candidates.
Those who thought that way were disappointed. When nominations opened, all the 18 candidates went for the forms and actually paid the GH¢25,000 filing fee to prove their seriousness. One candidate, Mr Nkrabea Effah-Darteh, however, fell by the wayside on technical grounds. The rest marched on to congress.
Though all the candidates pledged to conduct their campaigns in a mature and decent manner, caution was thrown to the winds when the going got tough and mudslinging became the order of the day. At one stage, it was alleged that Nana Akufo-Addo’s dentures were falling. At other times it was said of him that he was arrogant and that he sounded too upper-class British.
The other candidates had their fair share of condemnation and ridicule. But the man who caught the biggest attraction was Mr Alan Kyerematen, perceived to be the President’s darling boy and who had enough to spread and spare. Like the Biblical Joseph, who was seen by his brothers as the darling of Jacob, their father, and who must be eliminated, all the other candidates and, to a large extent, the rank and file of the party, as it seemed, ganged up against Mr Kyerematen, the Cash Man.
The party as a whole was not spared image bashing. For many people, for 18 candidates to express interest in the presidency meant there was something more than leadership at stake. To some, the NPP was full of people who were inordinately or overly ambitious or just power hungry. Others felt that some of the candidates, after a critical self-examination, would have realised that they had no chance, but in their quixotic mentality, they thought the delegates would embrace them.
However, at the end of the day, it was democracy which triumphed. The NPP congress demonstrated that when the people were given the freedom, they knew how to make a choice. That is why it is wrong for a few individuals to come to the conclusion that a government has lost favour and arrogate to themselves the authority to remove it from power.
All said and done, Mr Kyerematen should be congratulated on the excitement and anxiety he injected into last year’s campaign for the presidential slot and the eventual success of the congress. He brought real competition into the game which, otherwise, from the look of things, was going to be a one-way traffic for Nana Akufo-Addo, the eventual winner.
Even though he was accused of dishing out money freely and exploiting the blessing of the President, Mr Kyerematen sustained the tempo of the campaign and left some of the candidates dazed and mesmerised with his campaign strategy. Some of the aspirants, no doubt, might have wondered whether he was one of them.
When he felt he was running out of time, he went by air, while others struggled with the pothole-filled roads to reach the delegates. In fact, it needed a formidable person like Nana Akufo-Addo to deny Mr Kyerematen his presidential ambitions.
When it mattered most, it needed a Kyerematen style to bring proceedings to a happy end when the man threw in the towel after a thrilling first-round contest when he could have overstretched the already tired delegates to a second gruelling round. That singular and honourable decision ensured party solidarity and took the steam out of the doomsday prophets, sending the strategists of the opposing parties running into their planning offices, knowing that now had a lot of work to do.
The outcomes of the various congresses, to me, have a common message to Ghanaians: That our politics is maturing very fast and that hero-worshipping, tribal, religious or ethnic sentiments have very little to determine the people’s choice if it comes to those who hold their destinies in their hands. We are gradually getting to the point where a critical assessment of the quality of candidates will supersede all other considerations.
We are beginning to realise that numbers are good spices for democracy, that they engender healthy competition and offer freedom of choice. We are also learning to accept that tolerance and accommodation are the best tools to confront underdevelopment. It is for this reason that we should get ready for a tough and interesting presidential and parliamentary contest this year.

Kofiakordor.blogspot.com