CPP Leadership asked to play down parochial interests

Accra, Sept.22, GNA - A member of the National Executive of the Convention People's Party (CPP) said at the weekend that the Party could only regain its past glory if those in leadership positions played down on parochial interests.

US based, Mr Ato Sackey, said in an interview with the Ghana News Agency that: "We have not been able to do much because there are so many parochial interests within the party...In our recent history it has always been about self and those who have money.

"In greater democracies people with money look for people with political potentials," he stressed.

Mr Sackey, one time Presidential hopeful of the CPP, suggested the need for the Party to rid itself of platitudes and rather focus on internal re-organization and not past glories.

"Platitudes don't work anymore. We have a manifesto that is full of platitudes. It is well and good to say we are going to give everybody free education but how are we going to do it?" He asked.

Mr Sackey said the CPP needed a think-tank that would well articulate the general socio-economic decay in the country to win votes in the 2004 Elections.

He called for the formation of a Research Bureau and an Economic Advisory Committee to be able to achieve feat.

"Standing up and criticising the government doesn't work anymore. People can criticise but it takes wise men to come out with solutions." Mr Sackey was not in favour of the CPP forging an electoral alliance with any political party.

He criticised the over reliance of the country's economic policies on the Breton Wood Institutions, warning that Ghana was gradually becoming a colony of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Meanwhile, Alhaji Ibrahim Mahama, a Tamale based Lawyer, who lost the Presidential slot of the CPP to Mr George Opersika Aggudey, a Business Executive, last Sunday has ruled out the possibility of being a running mate to the Presidential Candidate.

He told the GNA in an interview that he has been a running mate to Presidential Candidates since 1992 and this time round he was not ready to do that again.

Alhaji Mahama was the running mate of General Emmanuel Erskine in 1992, when the retired General was the Presidential Candidate of the Defunct Peoples Heritage Party.

In 1996, he was the running mate of the late Vice-President Kow Nkensen Arkaah for the Peoples Convention Party and the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Convention Party, that later became the CPP in the 2000 General Election that saw Professor George Hagan as the Presidential Candidate.