CPP Unity On Course - Chairman

The leader and Chairman of the Convention People's Party (CPP), Dr. Abubakar Al-Hassan has indicated that the CPP is holding talks with other Nkrumahist traditions for a possible merger to compete the 2004 elections as a united force.

"We are talking and at the appropriate time, you will hear from us," he told Chronicle in an interview last Saturday after opening a workshop intended to educate regional executives of the party on its manifesto. He gave broad hints that everything was on course for a strong united Nkrumahist family to win power in the 2004 general elections.

Dr. Abubakar Al-Hassan warned Nkrumahists not to revolve the party around one personality but rather it should be an organisation rallied around the Nkrumahism ideology.

He said the CPP is a mass movement and it does not matter who holds the wheel-drive for a moment. On suggestions that the party revolves around the personality of Ghana's first President Osagyefo Dr.

Kwame Nkrumah, Dr. Al-Hassan said the organisation is rather based on the ideas and programmes of Nkrumah.

He said the principle of the party is very clear in that it shall never revolve around a personality but rather the ideology it stands for. Touching on the import of the workshop for regional executives, the leader of the CPP, the first political party to rule the country under the leadership of Dr.

Kwame Nkrumah said "Now we are training trainers from all regions on the party's manifesto so that they could go back and train those on the ground."

He described the workshop as an organisational drive for the masses to know what the party stands for. He emphasised the need for party executives to educate those at the grassroots on the party's manifesto, noting that education is "an instrument for wielding the amorphous collection of people into an organised and dedicated body of men and women sharing an identical view in human society".

He observed the need to project the democratic centralism on which the edifice of the CPP is built. "It means simply that at every level the people should freely elect all organs of the party, and following from this all lower organs of the party must follow the directives of the higher organs, and the entire membership must follow the directives of the central committee of the party," he added.

Participants at the workshop were taken through the party's constitution and structures, functions of officers and organs and the right and obligations of officers among other vital topics. Present were top CPP stalwarts including Comrade Johnny Hansen.