NDC, what next?
| Posted: Wednesday, October 12, 2005
The denouement we were talking about concerning Gizele Yadzi finally came to pass last Thursday, not with the bang it had been billed to have, but something of an anti-climax.
The woman did not turn up and the clash that had been expected between her backers and detractors never happened. That we believe should be the end of this non-event that had been played up in sections of the media ad nauseam.
The NDC was behind the whole caper with some commentators tracing it all the way to the NDC boss, ex-Flt. Lt. Rawlings. No wonder, one of his hangers-on, a Victor Smith - a person with no known expertise or even position within the NDC - was all over the place making a nuisance of himself by holding up Madam Yadzi as the tool by which they would bring down Ghana's President and Government. It did not happen, but the noise surrounding the attempt was distracting enough.
The NDC cannot absolve itself from this totally nugatory political misadventure. We have these past few months been calling on the NDC to reform its politics or lose out completely on the prospects of the New Africa. The party started off the year with a programme of "We cannot wait till 2008".
This programme underpinned its parliamentary walkouts/boycotts, ill-fated wahala street marches and the clutching at straws, like Madam Yadzi to speed up the toppling of the government, which won its second mandate only eight months ago. Even the good news of debt forgiveness was grasped on and ravaged by the party. Party leader Rawlings is reported to have posted stuff on the internet in a bid to get Ghana dropped from the beneficiary nations. The hare-brained capers go on and on…
The time, we believe, has come for the modernizers within the NDC to come forth and set a fresh agenda for their party. They must take cue from the NPP, which they thought could never win an election, because of its antecedence. The NPP re-invented itself and marketed itself on fresh agenda of change and is now on a winning spree.
If the NDC wants to challenge the NPP in 2008, this is the time to cut out the crap, drop the excess baggage of hubris, do away with the adherence to the doctrine of "anger of the people", totally eschew the boom outlook in governance and embrace the gentle face of democracy! That is the next way for the NDC if it should become relevant in the New Africa. Period!
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