WHY ARE YOU A SOCIALIST? – NDC INTERNAL ELECTIONS IN PERSPECTIVE

Many have come to see the inherent and intrinsic emptiness that accompanies materialism, consumerism and profiteering. Personally, it started off with me becoming aware of certain things around me, the vast inequality between rich and poor people and countries. I become aware of the extent of conflict and oppression of poor countries by the rich countries and the exploitation that huge corporate multinational companies get away with after reading George Monbiot’s book “The Age of Consent”. That feeling was what attracted me to reggae music, Pan Africanism, Rastafarianism and inspired me to read extensively about Marx, Trotsky and Engels and their works. It thus become obvious what system I’d rather want to be a part of. I was raised in a capitalists dominated environment. My uncle who was a Minister in Nkrumah’s government, later joined the UP elements. I was told many ugly stories about Nkrumah and I listened attentively to discussions between my uncle (W.A Wiafe) and his allies, Gbedemah, Victor Owusu and others. I had access to hundreds of anti Nkrumah books and copies of old anti Nkrumah newspapers. As part of a socialist students group in my school, socialism gave me the chance to evaluate the human condition. Through comradeship and a sense of solidarity it became clear to me that the same worries, anxiety and yearning to create a sense of meaning in life is something experienced by most people. I developed that militant posture because of stance I took against decisions and policies I considered oppressive and my brother and friend Kissi Afari will tell you how we mobilise the students of our schools to demonstrate against the authorities and the challenges we encountered. In fact, my colleagues saw me more as a Marxist than a socialist because of the articles I published and my utterances. My position was and is, capitalism is a fundamentally exploitative system in which capitalists as such are parasites who contribute nothing (insofar as they are managers, entrepreneurs, and the like, they are not capitalist as such). I think exploitation is an evil, a form of oppression which the workers and allies can abolish by their own collective action.

The NDC just finished its third hurdle, a well organised conference. Persons elected are people who have the wherewithal to propel the party to the targeted point. The good news is that the losers are as solid and capable as the winners meaning, the party has more reserves in terms of human resource. My prayer is that the NDC sticks to its known and core principles going forward. It is a pro left political organization and must adhere to all the known associated principles and tenets. Election period in Ghana comes with its own unique sales strategy. It is now a season of give and take with lots of commercial activities in the red light streets. We saw what happened during the Npp conference. Their delegates prostitution reached its crescendo. My prayer is that the NDC doesn’t emulate this evil practice. In opposition, the party needs capable hands, tough minded persons and people who will dedicate their entire life to the struggle ahead. As in the real world, what makes prostitution industry thrives is not the availability of female sex hawkers, it is the large supply of male patrons who are accomplices. As a socialist political organization, our principles and values are sharply different from those held by our political opponents. Any shift from those core values to what our opponents practice, could land us into serious crisis. The poor, the coconut seller, the poor worker, farmer feels good identifying himself with the NDC because of our values. To start this vote buying business or monetisation politics means we moving away from our natural allies. I read many articles on vote buying in our politics. But the truth is vote buying does not only happen in the wee hours of the election day. It starts from the parties primaries. At the branch and ward levels , the amount may be minimal but the stake goes higher as we climb higher on the ladder. We can even extend it to the application fees charged by the political parties. Intending aspirants at the regional, national positions are compelled to pay cut throat fee enough to scare away serious candidates. This accounts for why many candidates presented to the electorates by the parties perform abysmally during elections.

Many of our politicians have no sense of shame. They will rather impovrish the masses and give them stipends in the wee hours of the election than do what he promised the electorates. We cannot discuss this issue without look at the electorates too. Many are shortsighted. They are bad students of history.

My prayer is that the NDC avoid that dangerous arena. The party will encounter serious internal and external challenges if it allows this dangerous phenomenon to thrive in the party. We need a formidable team to support whoever is elected the flag bearer in the 2020 campaign. Persons elected yesterday all have what it takes to lead the NDC. The are tried and tested people. What we need now is team work, flexibility and proper coordination.

The Npp is gradually abandoning its ideological orientation and inherent principles, has always been a party accustomed to government and less interested in theories but have been equally class identified. Their core principle is that there are large areas of social organization in which it was improper for government to meddle. Government did not have to concern itself with the balance of payment (which to them was always expected to be favourable or self adjusting)etc etc. Today they are challenging the NDC to mention one social intervention programme. The NDC must start examining the relationship between its ideology and continuity of the prevailing political order and establish an analytical framework that will form the basis for assessing the role of the centre left ideological orientation in its contemporary political move. Social media has increased political awareness and interest among the youth, we have new breed of young politicians who joined the political train via the social media. Most of these young persons do not attack much importance to ideology in their exploits and do not know what ideology consist. The political parties themselves have stopped relying on traditional ideologies leading to the irrational decisions being made. All the parties have abandoned their ideologies and polity of the future is going to be driven by piecemeal technological adjustments of the existent system. To save the party from the emerging tsunami, the party must go back to its ideological tradition and allow the party structures to operate devoid of unnecessary modernities and interferences. Allowing a centre right political organisation to evangelize a centre right party could lead to total obliteration.