Reformed CPP Must Not Align With NPP - Pratt

THE EDITOR of the INSIGHT, Mr. Kwasi Pratt Jnr. who is also a leading member of the Convention People's Party (CPP), has outlined conditions for his membership of the New CPP which is borne out of the merger by the National Reform Party (NRP) and the CPP.

Speaking at a NRP-CPP one-day seminar held at Tema on Saturday, the social commentator said that he can only be part of a merger that will not bring back the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) to power.

Mr. Pratt said that Ghanaians voted the NPP to power because the then ruling party, National Democratic Congress (NDC), had lost touch with the suffering majority.

Unfortunately, the NPP seems not to find solutions to the many problems and are repeating the past mistakes he asserted.

According to him, the NPP is demonstrating to Ghanaians that they have re-elected to power the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank who remote control our economy.

On the division in the CPP, the fire brand journalist said it is unfortunate that top members of his political party are campaigning for the NPP on Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) concept and are doing same for water privatisation.

According to him, the NPP while in opposition vehemently condemned military coups but the whole nation was taken aback when newly sworn-in President J. A. Kufuor made his first visit to Togo to celebrate a military take over.

On the Value Added Tax (VAT), Kwesi Pratt said that the Kume Preko demonstration which led to the death of four persons in 1995 was betrayed by the Kufuor administration which has become insensitive to the plight of Ghanaians with the introduction of various tax, mentioning the astronomical increase in petrol prices as a case in point.

The NDC, he said, would not have dared to take some suicidal decisions that the present government is taking. Exploding further, he stated that the present government has made tertiary education a commodity only for the rich.

The issue of water privatisation by government met protests from all speakers. Mr. Gyekye Tanoh asked politicians to let their followers rise against the water privatisation and not wait till their various political parties annex power before talking about it.

According to him, if water is privatised people will fight over it as never witnessed before in this country. A leading member of the CPP, Dr. Nii Noi Dowouna on his party's problems said that the few at the top cannot hold the majority who want the merger to ransom and that they can go without those dragging their feet.

Also present were Dr. Abubakar Alhassan, Kyeretwie OPoku and Winfred Osei Wusu.