Choosing A Presidential Candidate: NDC Must Not Allow Lack Of Funds To Prevent Democratic Choice

Whenever I hear politicians alluding to lack of funds,   when explaining away  their inability  to deliver what they should  for their people, I shed tears  for Mother Ghana.


Why must Ghanaian taxpayers provide a group of well-educated politicians,   in power at any point in time in our country's  history,  with expensive vehicles and free  fuel to run them on; subsidised luxury-housing; hire domestic help for them at hapless taxpayers' expense; and provide them with sundry costly perks,  too numerous to mention here, if they are unable to think creatively to solve our nation's problems, I ask?


Take the business of funding of political parties for example. Now, if by coincidence,  tomorrow,   a group of well-connected businesspeople in Ghana  decided to approach  their friends and  business associates in places such as:   Congo Brazzaville;  Angola; Equatorial Guinea;  and Nigeria,  for  interest-free loans and gifts of money,  surely,  there is no law in Ghana preventing  them from so doing, is there?


Furthermore,  we all know that  no matter where a businessperson sources funds to run his or her business, what they do with it is no one's business  safe his or hers  - as long as those funds came through the banking system and all taxes due on them duly paid.


(Incidentally, most of us  also  know that by definition - in a global economy in which the only certainty is uncertainty -    governments (forced by dire over-gearing circumstances to rebalance their finances - by cutting back on spending) can only provide a relatively small number of jobs, at any given time:  despite politicians' foolish and unhelpful pretense to the contrary. But I digress!)


Can  businesspeople who source funds from friendly sister African nations,  not  be persuaded  to help strengthen our young democracy,  by donating funds to all the political parties in Ghana?


And if they did so,  would they not be helping to make those parties better able to reach out to the masses of the Ghanaian people,  to explain their ideas for improving the business climate in Ghana?


And is it not, dear reader,  policy-making that enables the  private-sector of our national economy to  thrive,  which will enable private-sector entities to  be in a position to actually create the desperately needed jobs that will  lift our people from the endemic poverty that blights so many young lives in our country?


With respect, the leadership of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) must be a tad more creative in their thinking - for a change.


Why not approach some of the many patriotic local businesspeople who are always willing to do what they can to help keep Ghana stable -  by  funding all the political parties:  as their widows' mite contribution to the maintenance of a free and liberal society in Ghana?


Let the NDC understand clearly that in this particular instance, independent-minded and discerning Ghanaians  do not want to hear that defeatist old  refrain so beloved of unimaginative and incompetent politicians: "There's no money!".


Progressives will not permit that strategem-of-choice,   often deployed by cynical politicians to be used to justify the shelving of a free  election to select the NDC's candidate for the December presidential election.


Not when the circumstances that made  such an election necessary,  are so unique,  tragic and unfortunate.


Simply put, dear reader, the NDC must  not allow the nonsensical notion that it lacks the necessary   funds,   to prevent a democratic choice being made,  at a national delegates congress to select the party's replacement for President Mills,   as its  candidate for the December 2012 presidential election. A word to the wise...


Tel: 027 745 3109.


Email: peakofi.thompson@gmail.com