It was 1994 at the Legon campus of University of Ghana, when the daughter of a politician spoke into time, quizzing me about which political tradition was home to the Ghanaian cognoscenti.
I would not pretend we knew what the word cognoscenti meant as first year university students; we may have used a familiar word intelligible to our young minds.
We were both not politically very aware, but we were not altogether ignorant about the sharp political divide in Ghana, especially after the NPP had boycotted the 1992 parliamentary elections, resulting in the writing of the ‘Stolen Verdict.’
TESCON and TEIN had not been formed on our university campuses.
In those days, student politics was contained on campus, and didn’t stray into the established political traditions of the NPP and NDC.
Unsexy intellectuals
Unbeknownst to us, our student leaders had leanings towards the popular political parties.
The NPP had branded itself as the party for the intelligentsia and the politically informed, while the NDC was merely the democratic veneer of the PNDC, with President Rawlings wearing the army uniform on the inside.
The antecedents of the NDC made it intellectually unsexy for anybody with a thing for books to be associated with the party. Meanwhile, students wore badges of the Danquah-Busia tradition with pride. It was not uncommon for friends to mock intellectuals who showed their Rawlings side: “How can a sharp mind like you be NDC?”.
The reality, however, as eloquently articulated by journalist Richmond Keelson in a seminal treatise, is that the NDC has always housed some of the most intelligent minds in Ghana since the Fourth Republic.
This is the party of I.K. Adjei-Mensah, Kofi Totobi Kwakye, Obed Asamoah and D.F. Annan. It is the party of Kwesi Botchwey, P.V Obeng, Goozie Tanoh, Mary Grant and John Mahama. Gradually, the NDC has groomed some of the smartest minds in Ghana today who lead the public conversation with oratorical fireworks and rhetorical brilliance.
We failed to see their clever side when we only knew them as babies with sharp teeth.
Today, they are men and women with sharp brains.
The NPP may struggle to find answers to Felix Kwakye Ofosu, Sam George, Sam Okudzeto Ablakwa, Beatrice Annanfio, and Sammy Gyamfi.
My university friend, the politician’s daughter, identifies with her father’s party as a cabinet minister while I hide behind these columns as a wandering neutral who votes on policy and regrets on principle.
Either NPP or NDC
We had suspicions that the sharp minds who later joined partisan politics may have merely transitioned into national governance from student leadership, as part of the organic process of their own political evolution, and not on the basis of any strong ideological leanings to any of the dominant parties.
The party in power was attractive and they were simply won over.
These suspicions would later be confirmed by NPP founding member Dr Nyaho Nyaho Tamakloe in his autobiography Never Say Die!
In the book, Tamakloe writes that any of the brilliant minds in the NDC today could easily have joined the NPP.
Haruna Iddrisu, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah and others in student leadership at the time could have been wooed to the NPP.
Strategically, and for very clever reasons, the NDC has continued to brand itself as a mass party peopled by the common man, while the NPP has failed to shirk off its elitist personality as a group that has been ring-fenced to attract the degree-wielding aparatchick, whether they had a vote or held a foreign passport. In the end, the history of electoral victories in Ghana, especially in the fourth republic, has favoured the NDC more than the NPP. And perhaps, for the first time in Ghana’s political history, Parliament elected a Speaker from the opposition NDC side when the NPP were majority.
The dividing political lines may not always be as clear.
There are no lefts. No rights. And no centers. That is Ghana’s political smorgasbord.
The Patriotic Institute
What is the future of the NPP today, as flag-bearer aspirants jostle to win constituencies in a party that seems to be favouring divisions along tribe, wealth and godfather influence?
The decision to elect a leader in January may be part of a grand strategy to find answers to the NDC’s growing intellectual appeal. A new NPP flagbearer faces an unusual challenge of marshalling potent ideas to confront a mass party that has a very welcoming frontline of sharp minds whose approach to politics is more endearing and inclusive.
Dr Bawumia still carries the not-too-helpful tag as former president Akufo-Addo’s intelligent economics talisman whose record on the economy didn’t seem to have spoken for him. Kennedy Agyapong, Bryan Acheampong and Osei Adutwum have peculiar challenges to surmount.
The new leader of the NPP also faces the huge problem of standing up to the Mahama legacy, especially if the President is able to achieve just half of the 26 promises in his social contract. John Mahama has picked some of the most intelligent minds to help prosecute this agenda.
These ministers, mostly young men and women, have in their short period in office initiated or done some bold things, even if those things appear populist or are pompous gestures in grandstanding.
How does the NPP intend to respond to the NDC’s enduring brand as a mass but intellectually agile party?
The recent launch of the NPP’s Patriotic Institute may be an answer to this challenge.
In furtherance, the General Secretary of the NPP has warned that a certification from the institute will be a requirement for appointments in a future NPP government. We know these ideological institutes have hardly been effective in our politics. What happened to the NDC’s Institute of social democracy?
Kwesi Tawiah-Benjamin
Tissues Of The Issues
Ottawa, Canada
bigfrontiers@gmailc.com
