By Kofi Thompson

I have often wondered what the views of the hard-working and prosperous middle-class people in the neighbourhood I live, really are, when contentious national issues have come up for debate, in the court of public opinion.

Those hard-working and prosperous Ghanaians, who live in my neighbourhood, are a natural constituency for the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

Clearly, if the NPP wants to continue holding on to the support of this particular demographic in Ghanaian society, the party must distance itself from the old-style Ghanaian politics - in which cynical and extremist politicians often hire thugs, petty criminals and muscled-spongers as "enforcers", to dish out insults and physical punishment to independent minds, such as the party's Charles Wireko-Brobbeys and Kwame Pianims.

For such fair-minded and hard-working middle-class Ghanaians of good conscience, who also believe in the enterprise Ghana, the question is: should the NPP not be presenting Ghanaians with alternative policies, whenever criticising the regime currently in power in Ghana, and gaining more new converts to its cause that way - instead of the endless insults and negativity, which is now standard fare for its small army of "communicators", many of whom wax lyrical, doom-mongering on the airwaves of radio and television stations across the nation, and only end up putting off so many independent-minded, patriotic and apolitical Ghanaians, as a result of their cynicism and endless negativity?

The intolerance shown by political parties in Ghana to independent-minds, is worrying in the extreme. Democracy is not only just a system of government - it is also a way of life based on tolerance. Cutting-edge and innovative ideas seldom evolve from groups and societies that are intolerant of dissenting views.

Little wonder that party manifestos in Ghana seldom contain creative ideas that are truly transformational.

It is not surprising that geniuses, who for blinkered and cynical political reasons, even criticise Supreme Court judges and accuse them of scarring off foreign investors - for ruling against foreign crooks running dodgy businesses here, which defraud the Ghanaian nation-state to the tune of some tens of millions of euros, by fraudulently securing judgement-debt orders in the law courts against the Republic of Ghana - hold sway in the NPP of today. Incredible.

What are we then to make of regulators in the bastions of capitalism, the UK and the US, which not too long ago, slapped fines of billions of dollars on leading banks guilty of manipulating the London Libor rate, for example, I ask?

It is those selfsame geniuses who have driven the NPP's fleet of Yutong buses to the end of so many metaphorical cul-de-sacs that they seem unable to reverse out of.

Let the pragmatists and one-nation politicians in the NPP, grab the steering wheels of their party's fleet of Yutong buses, from the unsteady hands of those smug, arrogant and incompetent drivers, whose poor map-reading skills lead only to cul-de-sacs, before December 2016 steals up on them.

The vast majority of ordinary Ghanaians are simply fed up with the nation-wrecking politics of violence, insults and intolerance.

That is why the NPP must change course - and move away from the path of intolerance and endless negativity, before it becomes too late to do so.

Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo and the party's prosperous middle-class silent-majority-base - as well as the ordinary people of Ghana who are inconvenienced by all that negativity - definitely deserve better. The NPP's moderates must seize control of their party now. A word to the wise...

Tel: 027 745 3109.

Email: peakofi.thompson@gmail.com. Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone from Vodafone