A surprise to NPP activists all over the country who remain in a disappointing ecstasy and who hardly believe that the political pendulum had changed since December last year continue to play a blame game; accusing one another for the defeat of the party.

Stalwarts of the party who could still not believe why the party had lost December elections had begun the attributions of the failure of the party to individual personalities whom they thought had contributed to the defeat due to their actions and inactions before and prior to the elections. Mustafa Hamid and Dr. Arthur Kennedy, whose expectations were overwhelmingly to see Nana Akufo-Addo as the president of Ghana, had begun and sunk deep into the blame game internal politics and mostly shift their defeat to the former president J.A. Kufour.

Indeed they have in minds some of the policy initiatives of former president Kufuor which were inimical and indictment to the success of the party. Mustafa Hamid, for example, went to the extent of publications of indicting policies that had contributed to the NPP’s failure to win the elections. Former president Kufuor could be liable and partly responsible for the defeat, but might not be entirely responsible owing to the fact that popular democracy is a collective decision making processes of which each individual members contribute to issues in terms of policy initiations and implementations.

In reality, there is the need to look at the party’s defeat holistically so as to extricate ourselves from one-sidedness and blame game arguments. It is imperative to consider six main dimensions which arguments of the defeat of NPP could be analysed. The promises of NPP in 2000 elections, leadership of the government, personality, utterances, conditions pertaining at the time and electorates are factors that will login a thorough analysis of the defeat of NPP.

NPP was the strongest opposition party in the 2000 elections and had come out of good policies alternative which all and sundry had bought into and believed it was a credible alternate government to rule Ghana. The posture of the party at the season was impeccable and many electorates could not but to try them based on their policies and programmes. One would have to recall some prominent promises captured in the NPP manifesto such as mechanisation of agriculture, building of agricultural institutions to train farmers to enhance modernisation processes in order to ensure food sufficiency.

Against this background, Ghana continued to import food items during the last eight years and this has even discouraged farmers to produce. Poultry industry has collapsed due to the inability of government to facilitate domestic security of the poultry industry. Ghana continued to import rice to the tune of almost $500 million annually. What agricultural policies did NPP adopt during the eight years of former president Kufuor’s administration? The presidential special initiative in starch had collapsed, cotton had collapsed, guinea fowls had collapsed and others. In fact all initiatives had collapsed and the resources which had gone into these initiatives had become wasteful.

The large chunk of the population of Ghana is found in the agricultural sector and if a government had promised the welfare of that population and yet reneged to fulfil promises made to them, then one has a course not to renew their mandate. In spite of the fact that NPP used the welfares of the farming population, teachers, dog chain sellers, shoe-shine boys etc as baits to come to power, there have been feelings of neglects and disappointment among these population and therefore the defeat of the party. One disappointed policy initiative of the NPP government was to solve the alarming unemployment problem which resulted into the registration of unemployed youth in 2001. The expectations of the youth never came till national youth employment started in 2006. This initiative had staggered with delayed payment of salary to the workers. But the leadership and the government were living well.

Of course the leadership of NPP in 2000 had packaged itself as problem solving, a people who were ready to serve rather than to be served with the mantra of creating jobs and providing security for Ghanaians. The then flag bearer John Agyekum Kufuor has had soft and calm personality and was surrounded with people many Ghanaians thought would deliver to move Ghana from poverty to prosperity. The lifestyles of the leadership of NPP during the eight years were property owning rather than creating jobs, providing basic amenities such as water, classrooms, electricity, sanitation etc. contrary to the provision of these basic necessities, the leadership chose to spend scarce resources for their comfort.

These are the concerns of Mustafa Hamid, Arthur Kennedy and the likes that after the defeat have realised the flaws of the leadership of the party and have attributed it to the former president Kufuor forgetting that they had supported and defended these self centred profligate leadership. There was so much corruption among the leadership of the party with regards to property acquisition, sales of state property to party folks, cronyism, nepotism, arrogance, irresponsiveness, looting of scarce resources and mismanagement of the economy. Personality is important in every organisation.

Personality of the president was least said. Conflict of interest indeed occurred when the president’s son bought a hotel which was dubbed ‘hotel de wawawaa’. This is a serious indictment to the personality flaw of the president. Many avowed NPP functionaries have supported this serious abuse of power. Arguments were made in favour of this conflict of interests. This could only happen in Ghana or in Africa. Notwithstanding this, issues of conflict of interests lashed in the face of Kwamena Bartels in the award of contract to his daughter. And in fact, there were many that this piece cannot contain.

The personality of the 2008 flag bearer of the party has a lot of questionable marks. The Visa fraud in the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the inability to protect the interest of Ghanaian citizens oversees when Nana Akufuor Addo had occupied sensitive positions in government and did not do much to protect them was nothing but unfortunate for a person who wanted to rule Ghana. The issues of cocaine allegation which was peddled against the flag bearer and he adopted quietness instead of refuting the allegation had severely worked against him and the party. Conditions at the time played a significant role.

In every season, conditions change. It worked in favour for NPP in 2000 and they were quick to deny that it was external condition but rather the internal. They accused the then NDC of mismanaging the economy where it was clear that the external conditions at the season were working against NDC. There was a drop in the prices of gold and cocoa which were the major foreign sources of revenue for the country. Moreover the price of crude oil in the world market was escalating thereby making it impossible for NDC to contain the economy. The same could not be said to be different from NPP in 2008.

The world market price of crude oil went astronomical though Ghana’s major export products had their prices stable and steadily increasing which basically differed from NDC era where prices were increasing and Ghana’s export products were decreasing in price. Since Ghana’s economy is tied to the external force, the conditions at a time and especially electioneering seasons will definitely affect and will work either in favour or against a government in power. Managing campaign massages are vital for a success of a party.

Utterances in political platform go a long way to affect chances of a party winning an election. NPP claimed and professed of an issue based campaign during the elections and yet their utterances did not hit at messages devoid of personality and party demonised campaign. A vote for Atta Mills was a vote for Rawlings campaign was unfortunate and did not work in favour of NPP. Some of the messages were trivial, frivolous and outrageous. Some key members who should live above such utterances were meddled into such frivolity. In this many members of the party engaged in this and they were trying to rewrite history of Ghana by telling and educating the electorates of untruth.

Ghanaian electorates are matured and cannot be taken for granted. Sixteen years of multiparty democracy was enough and this has enlightened Ghanaians of a kind of massages they would buy into and which they would discard. It must be clear to politicians that they cannot deceive to win an election in Ghana and therefore truth and nothing but the truth must be told to Ghanaian electorates.

The defeat of NPP should be a wake-up call for politicians and they must learn lessons from it to help them in their endeavour. NPP should stop blaming one another and forge ahead next time and they must do this cautiously. They were overambitious and underestimate the defeat of the party.

Credit: Charles Mensah Ahorlete

Email: husseinmens@yahoo.co.uk