Come again Kwesi Pratt!

RE: Opposition parties failing to provide credible alternative-Pratt

Oh Mr. Pratt, aren't you the National Communications Director of the CPP and as such you are on the national executive committee of the party? What do you think the membership voted you into that position to do?

I remember very well that somewhere in the late nineties I had gone to Ghana to visit and during that visit I had pressed my cousin who is a businessman about town and one of the leading lights in the NPP to try and introduce me to Kwesi Pratt if he knew him. You see before I left the US to go home I had read about all the troubles he was having with the NDC government for standing up for his principles and speaking truth to power and was rewarded with these jail times. When I learned that he was an Nkrumaist that sealed the deal for me, I wanted to meet him and maybe be inspired by him. But somehow this did not happen, I guess my cousin decided he knew what was best for me and did not afford me the opportunity. He rather tried hard to get me to meet President Kuffour, for at one time the NPP was meeting somewhere in Kumasi and he tried to convince me to go with him to this meeting so he could introduce me to the President. For many reasons I resisted, and the interesting thing is once I decided not to go he did not go either.

During those days, I believe Kwesi Pratt was principled and inspiring, but now I don't know, he has become a caricature of his former self. Here you are the executive in charge of publicity for the CPP and in a situation where your endeavors are most needed you become afflicted with ineptitude and then you turn around and blame same for its failings. Don't you see the irony in this, or you have gotten to the point where you are bereft of experiencing irony? By making such remarks, don't you see the self-condemnation and self-indictment inherent in it? Your fellow executives and especially you were elected by the membership of the party to do just this work, and by your inaction and indefference you have betrayed their trust and failed them.

You talk about divisions in the party, well, have you tried to do anything seriously about it? You are somehow always trying to blame the Patriots, for what I don't know. You should rather thank them, for if it wasn't for their efforts the agenda of the party would have gone nowhere. Tell me, since you and the current executives were elected nearly four years ago, what have you accomplished? If you were doing you jobs there would not have been any need for the Patriots, but since you were sitting on your hands and things were moving all around you, somebody had to take the ball and ran with it. For a while there, they were the only game in town and you have you to acknowledge that.

I know that now the Patriots and the Center have come to a meeting of the minds and have decided to work together. That is very good for the party and all of its many supporters and admirers and so please don't do anything to jeopardise this nascent coalescing of our forces. You can do so much, you have a significant platform and pulpit and I have always wondered why you don't use them to advance the agenda of the party. You have a newspaper and you have been contracted to appear on so many radio stations, but rarely do we hear you advocating for the party, why? We should be out there in the marketplace of political ideas mixing it up with everybody, with position papers on all the current issues of the day and the nation. The situation where issues of the day in Ghana are addressed and delt with by the branch of the party in London is just so disconcerting. It is your job and you have the means to do it.

Sometimes I wonder if your inaction and indefference aren't delibrate and that you may have a different agenda. Please prove me wrong!