WILL THE NEW PATRIOTIC PARTY SHED ITS AKAN TRIBAL-SUPREMACIST UNDERPINNINGS?

Any modern-day political grouping in Africa, which shares the philosophy of the colonial-era quislings (those well-educated, narrow-minded, and tribalistic Africans, from that dark period in our history – who actively cooperated with the colonial powers, and were on the payroll of Western intelligence agencies: because it served their parochial interests), has no future in the new and dynamic Africa, which is bound to emerge in the coming decades – when the next generation of 21^st century educated Africans take over the running of the nation-states in the continent: and usher in the long-awaited African Renaissance. 

Today’s Ghanaian equivalent of such a reactionary political grouping is the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Its very clever propagandists have largely succeeded in masking the true nature, of the one individual amongst that retrograde political tradition’s early leaders, Dr. J. B. Danquah – whose Akan tribal-supremacist triumphalism, most typifies the political culture of much of the current leadership of that political tradition. 

However, such negative thinking is clearly out of tune with present-day realities on the ground in Nkrumah’s Ghana – a modern and politically stable African nation-state, with an ethnically-diverse but united population that shares a common destiny, and in which there are virtually no extended family clans that do not contain family members, who hail from at least four different tribal groupings: and are related either through marriage or by blood-ties.

Unfortunately, if the NPP insists on continuing to remain the same kind of hidebound Akan-dominated political party, which it has been for the last eight years, that selfsame baggage from the past (like all the negative things that often end up landing politicians on the wrong side of history), will eventually doom the latest incarnation of the right-of centre Ghanaian political grouping, which draws its inspiration from that archetypal colonial African quisling (Dr. J.B. Danquah). 

Although most political commentators are reluctant to discuss it openly, the Akan tribal-supremacist ethos that essentially underpins the NPP, makes it a non-viable political party in the long-term – in a nation that has a majority of its citizenry made up of a new post-independence generation (most of them born after the overthrow of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in 1966), many of whom are lifelong urban dwellers: who even seldom know the villages their parents hail from. 

For such Ghanaians, tribe means absolutely nothing, in their choice of companions – and does not feature in their world-view, either. Since the NPP lost the presidential election last year, there has been a determined (but failed) effort by a faction of the NPP, to get their party to retain Nana Akufo-Addo as the party’s candidate for the December 2012 presidential election. 

Yet, when it suited them, those selfsame individuals (who had their Eureka-moment after the event, and have now conveniently discovered the benefit of retaining a well-known figure as their presidential candidate), did not hesitate in insisting that their party’s so-called democratic culture (another of the inventions of its imaginative propagandists), demanded that they elect a candidate for the December 2008 presidential election, rather than proclaim one by consensus.

Readers will recall that that was more or less their standard refrain, at that point in time, when there was talk in certain circles of retaining the then serving vice president, Alhaji Alihu Mahama – and letting him succeed President Kufuor as a consensus presidential candidate to unify the party. 

In the event, as many as seventeen hopefuls lined up to follow in their hypocritical, greedy, and philandering leader’s footsteps – hoping to imitate him, were they to be successful and win the election to become Ghana’s next president: and turn their family clans too, into Ghana’s equivalent, of America’s early twentieth century Rockefeller family. 

As we all know, our ex-Hypocrite-in-Chief’s family did eventually metamorphose into just such a family clan – with one influence-peddling lucrative deal after the other, sending their combined net worth into the stratosphere, by the end of that clever gentleman’s tenure as president. 

For an unbiased outside observer, it is a wonder that the northerners who continue to play second fiddle in the NPP, do not demand a bigger role in their party – as the NPP would never be able to claim to be a national party without their continued support. 

Sadly, it has been thus, from the days of the struggle for independence – when the elitist Dr. Danquah once incredibly dismissed the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) as a party of “veranda boys” with some “Ntafuo” in it. 

The question is, why do they not demand that a competent northerner with nationwide appeal leads their party the next time round – more so when the internecine fight for dominance in their party by the two factions of the traditional Akan tribal-supremacists who have dominated their party since its inception, threatens to tear their party apart?

Why do they not team up with the de-tribalized and honest Akans (who after all are more representative of ordinary Akans – who, as it happens, are amongst the most welcoming of people, on the surface of the planet Earth), as well as the other honest and principled non-Akans in their midst, and battle together on a united front to gain the ascendancy for one of their own, in the fight to choose the party’s presidential candidate for the December 2012 elections? 

(Incidentally, dear reader, a fascinating source that is also an easy read, which sheds light on the true nature of Dr. J. B. Danquah, is the brilliant Dr. Kwame Botwe-Asamoah’s contribution to the book, “Fight Back” (pages 46-66), published by the Socialist Forum of Ghana. It is available at the Freedom Centre: next door from the offices of The Insight newspaper at Kotoko Avenue, in Accra’s Kokomlemle.) 

Surely, at the very least, an NPP presidential candidate of northern extraction for the December 2012 election could be regarded as a suitable consensus candidate, whose choice might help unify that party quickly? 

Do they not realise that that is the surest way of giving their discredited party a new lease of life – and could be the first tentative step for them to take, in ridding their party of the miasma, which the baleful influence (now mercifully waning, but still palpable nonetheless) of the greedy and corrupt Akan tribal-supremacists in their midst, represents? 

The time has now come for the honest and detribalized NPP members to end the dominance of the once all-powerful cabal of Akan tribal-supremacists in the Kufuor presidency – who controlled their party throughout its years in power.

It was the unfathomable greed of that cabal of ace-liars, philanderers supreme, and irritating philistines, which was responsible for most of the many egregious examples of unethical practices and cases of corruption, which bedeviled their party during its period in power – many, alas, now coming to light at long last: much to the astonishment and horror of most independent-minded patriots in Ghana. 

If their party is to have a fighting chance of ever returning to power again, any time soon, they must sideline those whose terrible stewardship alienated most Ghanaians from their party, and lost them the power they won the easy way in December 2000 – largely because most of the good people of Ghana had become so thoroughly fed-up with the National Democratic Congress (NDC) regime. 

As we all know, the truth of the matter is that by December 2000, most Ghanaians were sick and tired of the high-handed ways of some of the NDC big wigs – especially as there was also the perception, amongst ordinary people throughout the country, that corruption in high places was rampant. 

Amazingly, it was even rumoured at the time, that the hero of June 4^th I979, was apparently being bankrolled by the British company, Biwater – which was said to be funding the education and living expenses of his children overseas. 

The plain truth, which few, in a nation full of fence-sitting moral cowards, are prepared to state publicly (because they fear the fallout from such open candour), is that in the interest of Ghanaian democracy, and the cohesiveness of our nation, it is imperative that the NPP rids itself of the greedy and dishonest Akan tribal-supremacists, whose dishonourable ways lost it the goodwill of ordinary Ghanaians, in the December 2008 elections. It is most unfortunate that those respectable-looking rogues appear to be still holding that party to ransom – even as we speak.