NPP needs new leadership with a cosmopolitan outlook

By Kofi Thompson

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) must not pass up the opportunity to reinvent itself - as a modern, one-nation political party that stands for businesspeople in the whole of Ghana: particularly small and medium-scale entrepreneurs.

It must rid its upper echelons of the narrow-minded and tribal-supremacist individuals - with mindsets set firmly in the Dark Ages - whose world-view is at variance with that of most ordinary people in Ghana.

The cosmopolitan nature of your average person in Ghana, is on display in the daily interactions neighbours have with each other, year in year out, in compound-houses across the length and breath of Ghana.

The tribal-supremacist nonsense-on-bamboo-stilts attitudes of those arrogant and self-important individuals, who have succeeded in tearing the NPP apart - to the wonder of many in Ghana - doesn't have much traction in this Ghanaian demographic, thank goodness.

For the sake of those one-nation Ghanaians and their homeland Ghana, the NPP must be taken over by a new executive that understands clearly that genetically, Ghanaians are one people - and that no tribe in our country is inferior or superior to another.

The NPP needs a leadership that is genuinely cosmopolitan in outlook - and wants the enterprise Ghana to succeed: whether the NPP is in power or not, for the sake of the ordinary people of our nation.

The tragedy for the NPP of today, is that Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo was not chosen as the party's presidential candidate for the December 2000 presidential election.

He would have left a record that could have made a lasting difference for the NPP.

That he is one of the few who refused to loot state lands during the Kufuor-era, shows how selfless he would have been as a leader of Ghana from January 2001 to January 2008. Pity.

Above all, if it wants to succeed, the NPP must rid itself of the baleful influence of the greedy, hypocritical individuals who talk endlessly about today's high-level corruption - but conveniently forget the unfathomable greed and utter selfishness that characterised the eight long years of the golden age of business for a well-connected and ruthless few: who grew super-rich during the kickback-filled Kufuor-era.

A totally new leadership of young and highly successful professionals, ready to publicly publish the sources of the party's funding, as well as their own personal assets, and that of their spouses - who have a cosmopolitan outlook and value ethical behaviour in those who elect to serve their people by going into politics - around the incorruptible and affable Nana Addo Danquah Akufo, as the party's presidential candidate, for the December 2016 presidential election, might very well win power for the NPP again. A word to the wise...