CPP gears up towards Election 2012 Campaign

As part of preparations towards Election 2012, the Convention People’s Party (CPP) on Tuesday organized a political strategy seminar for its national campaign team members, regional leaders and coordinators.

They were taken through political strategy, communication, grassroots mobilization, campaign coordination, security, electoral laws, intra and inter-party engagement and political marketing.

Other issues discussed were segmentation of campaign message, pro-active engagement with the media, dissemination of the CPP manifesto, and neutralization of opponents.

Speakers at the seminar included CPP’s Election 2012 Flag bearer Dr. Abu Sakara Foster, Ms Samia Yaba Nkrumah, National Chairman and Leader, Mr. Bright Akwetey, Legal Expert, Mr. Ivor Kobina Greenstreet, General Secretary and other leading members.

Ms Nkrumah charged party faithfuls to remain resolute and support efforts to revamp the party to win Election 2012.

"Let us put our differences aside and join to fight a common battle to liberate Ghana".

The CPP leadership tasked all regional, constituency and polling station executives to embark on house-to-house campaign, sensitize the public on CPP's manifesto and the unprecedented achievements of the CPP under Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's First President.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Mr. Akwetey said the new CPP still stood by the original ideals of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah as a socialist political party in Ghana.

He said the current leadership of the party formed on June 12, 1949 by Kwame Nkrumah to campaign for the independence of the Gold Coast was now confronted with leading the crusade for economic independence.

Mr. Akwetey said, “The legacy of CPP as the governing party under Dr. Nkrumah of the autonomous British colony of the Gold Coast from 1951 to 1957, and independent Ghana from 1957 to 1966 had over the years served as the nation’s foundation.

“The country needs CPP now to transform the nation, implement the unfinished developmental agenda of Osagyefo Dr. Nkrumah in modern day terms”.

He described the February 24, 1966 coup d'état by the National Liberation Council as the bane of Ghana’s development, “The clock of progress was set anti-clock-wise.

“No government since then has been able to set-in-motion any pro-active developmental agenda...we have reduced politics to baseless personality attacks and politicised almost everything to the detriment of the ordinary person”.

The CPP remained dissolved till January 29, 1996, when the National Convention Party and the People's Convention Party merged to form a new Convention People's Party. It has contested each election since 1996 with poor results.

In Election 2004, the party won three out of the 230 Parliamentary seats. Its Presidential Candidate, Mr. George Aggudey, won only 1.0 per cent of the total votes cast, while in the 2008 Presidential and Parliamentary elections the party won only one Parliamentary seat; that of Samia Nkrumah in the Jomoro Constituency.

The Presidential Candidate, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom performed below expectation managing to get 1.4 per cent of total valid votes.**