``… I would not be a proud Gen. Sec. in defeat``

JAK`s hidden meaning
…was it Ohene Ntow?
Posted: The Chronicle | Friday, July 31, 2009



By Charles Takyi-Boadu


Former President John Agyekum Kufuor vented what seemed like deep-seated anger on his party’s General Secretary, Nana Ohene-Ntow, when he spoke at the 3rd Ferdinand Ayim Memorial Lecture in Accra, on Wednesday night.

After making an emotional appeal to the rank and file of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to close their ranks and unite in the interest of the party, Mr. Kufuor expressed grave concern about the manner in which the NPP split its votes in the last elections, as a result of the emergence of independent candidates, and warned, “I would rather be a messenger in a victorious party that has formed a government, than a proud General-Secretary who would lead us into defeat.”

Though it was not clear whether he was referring to the current General-Secretary of the party, it is however believed that he was making an inference to Nana Ohene-Ntow, since according to the ex President, the late Ferdinand Ayim, who intended to contest the position, would have been a better General-Secretary for the party.

However, despite the chilled response from the audience, following this comment, the former President went ahead to say -“Please, I am talking from my heart; we’ve suffered for far too long”.

“So anything that will divide us, please let us approach it very cautiously because we have a historic duty to Ghana and to our tradition and to ourselves as individuals”, he cautioned.

Mr. Kufuor noted that the NPP cannot afford to lose another election since Ghanaians need the party back in government.

According to him, coming back to power in 2012 is not only a possibility, but also a must, and therefore charged the leadership and members of the party to work together to achieve this goal.

“Anything we do that will whittle down our votes, let us keep away from it, we must also keep away from anything that will divide us. We should respect each other, we should have fellow-feeling”, he said.

The programme, which was chaired by Businessman and party stalwart Mr. Kwame Pianim, was attended by key party functionaries including Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the Party’s Presidential Candidate in the 2008 elections and NPP former Ministers and Members of Parliament.

Though the party is hungry for power, Kufuor warned the leadership not to use any dubious means to achieve this. According to him, other political parties would even ‘kill’ to win power, but the Danquah-Busia-Dombo tradition would not beat that path to win power.

He however noted that “we should go to all length and pay all the cost, so that we can get back into power, I believe Ghana needs this tradition.” With the vast knowledge and intelligence available in the NPP, Mr. Kufuor said “nothing legitimate should be too expensive for us.”

Touching on the theme of the occasion, ‘Ghana’s developmental challenges: Perspective on the roles of competence, loyalty and sycophancy’, which was delivered by former Finance and Economic Planning Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, the former President said it is not for nothing that the economy of Ghana developed four-fold during his tenure of office as President, attributing the success story of his administration to competence. “We have it, but I am not suggesting that we should be complacent, we are targeting excellence, and for excellence we need to strive and strain to break records.”

In the party’s quest to come back to power, he noted that care must be taken in selecting people to positions of responsibility, since according to him loyalty is an important aspect of politics. He emphasised that “if you are forming a cabinet and you just look to competence, before you know, your act is stolen. NPP will lose its government to strangers, so we should be careful when we are defining loyalty.”

“It took us four to five decades to get into government, but our elders stayed the course, they sacrificed, that’s why I say our path is lighted with martyrdom, our leaders could have become sycophants, could have betrayed the course, but they didn’t do that”, he added.

Mr. Kufuor said the big changes in life all over the world tend to come through sound political leadership, which perhaps is the most critical in the evolution of rapidly developing nations, using the traits of France’s De Gaulle and China’s Lee Kuan Yew as typical examples of good political leadership.

Whilst appreciating the fact that the Dankwa-Busia-Dombo tradition is replete with a long chain of martyrs from the 1950s, the former President was of the belief that a man like the late Ferdinand Ayim deserves the position of ‘Martyr of our time’, and therefore stressed the need to celebrate him every year. He therefore asked those who believe in Ferdinand’s ideas and ideals to use the occasion to deliberate over serious political matters.