Politics of Saturday, 25 January 2020

Source: mynewsgh.com

‘Useless' CPP should dissolve into NDC – Sekou Nkrumah

Sekou Nkrumah Sekou Nkrumah

Son of Dr Kwame Nkrumah founder of the Convention People Party (CPP) Sekou Nkrumah is calling on his father’s legacy CPP to dissolve itself because it has become irrelevant.

“I think it is time the CPP party fold up and allow members to join the NDC!” He wrote.

According to him, the CPP is irrelevant and miserable after more than three decades of attempting to salvage itself and the only option available to it now is to join the National Democratic Congress (NDC).


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It is s obvious to any political observer that the CPP has lost relevance in contemporary Ghanaian politics, and that the party was long swallowed by the NDC party.

Maybe a little bit of history can clarify this.

Before the ban on party political activity was lifted in 1992 to pave the way for the general elections of that year, the main opposition group to the PNDC ( then the government in power) was the Movement for Freedom and Justice ( MFJ). The aim of that political movement was to return Ghana to a multi party system of democracy. I belonged to this movement and was elected as the chairman of the greater Accra region.

This movement was led by Professor Adu Boahene as chairman, with Jonny Hansen as vice chairman. It was made up of members from our traditional political divide ( CPP and UP), together they worked to rid Ghana of military dictatorship!

During those days there was an opinion that the movement transform itself into a political party, a position I supported. But most of the old folks wanted a return to their traditional political parties hence the formation of NPP representing the UP tradition and it became the largest opposition party to the NDC!

A CPP party did not emerge at the time, what we had was a fragmented front both in government ( NCP)and in opposition ( NIP, PNC, PHP)!

The results of the 1992 elections confirmed how weak the Nkrumahist parties were. And by 1993 there were efforts to unite the front that led to the formation of PCP! By the 1996 elections NCP came on board leaving only the PNC outside that unity! But what was more significant was the alliance formed with the NPP ( dubbed great alliance)! And that saw the PCP capturing 5 seats in parliament, the highest so far by an Nkrumahist party since 1992 ( although NCP had six seats in 1992, that was due to the boycott of opposition parties)!

When we fast forward to 2000 a similar pattern showed the Nkrumahist parties supporting NPP to victory!

2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 continued to show very poor results by the CPP, and PNC ( I will not even bother to include the GCCP of Dan Lartey’s fame ).

Clearly you can see the poor state of CPP reveled over a period of almost three decades and with no improvement in their fortunes I call for an immediate meltdown of the party and a transfer of the miserable remains to the NDC that is today the only viable party on the left of Ghanaian politics!