Who Lifts The NDC Flag (III): Edward Annan?

Mr. Edward Annan, the business magnet-turned-politician is one of the four contestants vying to lead the NDC into election 2008. What is interesting about his entry into the NDC presidential race is the demonstration of abundant talent within the ranks of this left-of-centre political group. It is also to send the signal to the party’s detractors that the NDC is not anti-business or against those who genuinely use their individual enterprise and creative talent to create wealth.

Having made giant strides in the corporate industry, and a very successful one at that, Eddie Annan as he is popularly referred to has proved all the anti-NDC propagandists wrong with his bold identification with the party and more so his open declaration to lead it into the 2008 electoral battle. As a business figure with a solid background in the entrepreneurial field, he is up in arms against the thieving and vindictive NPP, who since winning political power in 2000 has been on the loose, using covert and overt methods to stifle those successful businessmen who do not share in their ideology and corruptible vision.

At 61, Eddie Annan is not a very well known personality in the NDC. His name is more synonymous with business. Any contact with politics was in the pre-campaign period of 2000, when some devious media blackmailers, in their attempt to tarnish the hard won reputation of the then Vice President John Evans Atta Mills, (who is still in the field and gunning to retain his title to lead the party) was linked to swimming exploits in Eddie’s residence.
The attempt was to draw the Veep into a kind of image-damaging project of being a friend to a business tycoon and to therefore impute some wrong motives to the relationship. It failed. However, Eddie Annan was to suffer a series of media attacks on his business dealings compelling him after the NDC was voted out of power to organise a news conference to set the records straight. It was obvious that the press assaults on his business and the withdrawal of certain long-standing contracts for the Tema Port Expansion and Development projects by the NPP government was part of a grand design to collapse his business empire.
The major consideration for this heinous agenda was to cripple him financially and bring him on his knees and perhaps woo him to their side in order to decimate the NDC financially. How naïve they were in miscalculating the intelligence and creative ability of this self-made personality.
Unlike his business compatriots, Eddie is a very scrupulous character who did not hide his NDC credentials. He is not the one to run to the NDC tomorrow flaunting his credentials after the party wins power. He has taken the maximum risk to identify with the party of his choice. This show of open declaration, association, commitment and courage should be an example to some business prostitutes who have been keenly involved in NPP politics than the thorough-bred themselves just to make dubious money through illegal and corruptible contracts, an area in which the NPP government and party are specialists.
Eddie Annan has a track record in the corporate business world but lacks the political experience needed to galvanise the multitude of impoverished and poverty-stricken countrymen and women debilitated by the NPP governments thieving policies. Although, he is not a political heavyweight in the strict sense, as he appears to be a political neophyte in the open discourses of political big guns in the party, Eddie has proven to all that there are different dimensions to political power. He has now identified and been identified as one of the peerless contenders. Annan cannot fault anybody for his marginalisation in the past in this open political discourse. His presence in the NDC presidential race is not for the fun of it. It is our view that he is in it to satisfy a long term ambition. The party’s delegates are fully aware of the contending interests and the real interests of the millions of Ghanaians out there suffering from the insensitive and the corrupt gang called the NPP and their economic palliatives. Political preferences are there for the delegates to deal with. These are driven mainly by the reality on the ground. In this case, whether Eddie Annan’s vast reservoir of business acumen is what they subscribe to or the political track record of his competitors in the race is a matter left to the decision-makers—the delegates to make. The business tycoon has been campaigning for the slot for the past four to five months. We are constrained to pin-point to the inability of Eddie to articulate effectively the party’s Social Democratic Agenda. Party ideology is very essential in the NDC’s quest to dislodge the NPP from that undeserved pinnacle. It is so vital as to differentiate between the NDC welfare concept with the ordinary citizens in mind with respect to decent shelter, the right to eke out a living through state support and meaningful education for all and not for the privileged property-owning class alone as being pursued by the NPP.

On his human relations, much is not known of this pleasant personality. Having barricaded himself behind the high walls of his corporate world, Annan is least seen interacting with the rank and file of the party’s foot-soldiers. His real contact with this all important nerve-centre of the NDC has been recent when he declared his intention to seek the flag. From afar, we believe in his capacity to relate very well with those around him. He, however, needs to do more to demystify the perception of being too reclusive.

Eddie Annan may not have the garb of P.V. Obeng, when it comes to socio-economic and political oratorical skills. But he compensates for this disability with a careful diagnostic and surgical precision of his vision for corporate Ghana, projecting from his use of business language for the greater part of his life. His style of presenting his vision is laudable. In any case, political speeches while on the soap box cannot be said to follow the kind of hard and fast rule.
The Masai Developer Chief Executive has a lot of positive attributes which he brings to the NDC. His success in the business sector is a plus which the NDC needs to tap whether he wins the mandate of the delegates or not. He also has what it takes to lure serious investors to invest in Ghana, especially in the manufacturing, agricultural and information technology sectors of the economy and not the already choked easy going services sector such as buying and selling.
Eddie Annan’s main handicap, according to what most people told the New Democrat in an interview is his lack of political depth. They contend that he is too narrowly focused on corporate business world and is found wanting in his expositions on the larger socio-politico analyses. It is the view of many that seeing Ghana’s larger contending interests from the prism of corporate business is not enough and therefore he needs to work on this department if his fantastic ideas and vision for the party is to come to fruition.
On his overall chances of leading the NDC into the 2008 elections read the New Democrat Pollster next week.