Written by Francis Ameyibor
In a short time from now, the Convention People’s Party (CPP) will hold a national delegates congress at the Accra International Trade Fair Center to elect new National Executives to steer the affairs of the party for the next four years and very importantly, take the CPP to Election 2012.
Professor Edmund N. Delle, a former National Chairman and leader of the CPP, sees himself as the logical choice for the party’s chairmanship and has, accordingly, responded to the call to serve the party once again in that capacity. In a document dubbed “The ORS Blueprint”, Professor Delle outlines his vision for a re-branded CPP that is well energized and poised to re-capture its past political glory.
The document explains that, considering the crucial nature of next year’s general elections as the CPP seeks to redeem its dwindling electoral fortunes and reposition itself as a formidable political force in the country, it has become imperative for the party to have a more experienced, committed, competent, visionary, resourceful, principled, independent-minded and results-oriented leader who can mobilize unite the members and marshal all the necessary resources, both human and material, to contest and make a strong impact in Election 2012.
The ORS Blueprint is a brief outline of the strategies that Professor Delle seeks to, firstly, sell himself to the delegates of the CPP towards the party’s national delegates congress and, secondly, adopt for good success in the 2012 general elections. ORS is simply the acronym for Overhauling, Replenishing & Success.
OVERHAULING Since the advent of the Fourth Republic, the CPP has been on the fringes of the country’s political system. The situation seems to be getting worse, given the party’s dwindling political fortunes. Currently, the CPP has only one parliamentary seat in Jomoro and that could be threatened in the next general elections if the party does not put its house in order. Disunity, acrimony and power struggle within the party have not helped matters at all. It is to address these challenges that Professor Delle envisages to totally overhaul the CPP when given the mandate as the National Chairman and Leader of the party. The overhauling will involve the reactivation of the party’s structures from the ward to the National Executive level in order to ensure greater impact in Election 2012. There is the need to build the party in such a way as to link all constituency offices to regional offices and then regional offices to the national office, all in a bid to ensure effective communication.
As an experienced medical practitioner and politician, Professor Delle has diagnosed the electoral haemorrhage of the CPP under the Fourth Republic and is convinced that the party urgently needs such overhauling.
REPLENISHING There is no doubt that the CPP needs renovation and innovation to shore up the party fortunes in the next general elections. Such an endeavour requires unity, consensus building and tenacity of purpose. Professor Delle seeks to achieve this goal by mobilizing the human resource within the party for effective campaigning. In that respect, there is the need to replenish the party human resource base through capacity building of its leaders, as well as identifiable groups, such as the Youth and Women’s wings; Tertiary networks; Council of Elders; past and present Members of Parliament and leading members of the party.
Since no single individual can achieve this, such an exercise requires “all hands on deck” to enable the party to make good use of the skills and resources of its members. To this end, there will be a need to create a special intra-party dialogue platform for all CPP flagbearer aspirants before and after the contest to reduce any animosity among them.
SUCCESS The overhauling and replenishing of the CPP will certainly set the party in motion for success in Election 2012 and beyond. However, all these will require hard work from every member of the party. It also requires unity and tenacity of purpose in the campaigning for the next general elections. The CPP stands at the crossroads – to move backward into political disintegration or set a democratic standard of coming out of the congress more united with both winners and losers jubilating together.
CONCLUSION Professor Delle is the most affable and politically matured person with an impeccable reputation in both private and public life, international exposure and highly connected, high diplomatic negotiation skills and ability to work with every Ghanaian irrespective of one’s political background. As delegates, you should look beyond monetary considerations when deciding who should occupy executive positions in the party because our focus should be on choosing capable men and women of integrity and acumen to lead the party to electoral success. Long Live the CPP, Long Live Ghana