PRATT CRIES FOR NDC

Kwesi Pratt Junior is an outspoken journalist and social commentator

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Tuesday August 31, 2010
Kwesi Pratt Jnr. the Convention People’s Party (CPP) member who has virtually become the unofficial spokesperson for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has predicted doom for the ruling party in 2012 if it does not swiftly put its chaotic house in order.

A seemingly frantic Pratt says the ‘internal insurgency’ happening in the NDC could take the party back to opposition.

Mr. Pratt, Managing Editor of Insight and a leading member of the moribund Committee for Joint Action (CJA) told Citi FM, an Accra-based radio station that there seemed to be deliberate moves by some NDC top guns to ensure that President Mills failed at all cost.

He said there was currently a raging “internal insurgency” within the ruling party, with key insiders making serious efforts to crush the Mills Presidency for their own parochial political interests but added that President Mills did not appear to appreciate the seriousness of the internal threat to his two-year-old presidency.

“All these agitations and sometimes downright insults of the president and manoevouring by some foot soldiers point to a certain strategy to replace the president and that is why I call it the state of insurgency. It is about regime change, it is a particular power struggle aimed at replacing the president,” he said.

Without mentioning names, Mr. Pratt warned that the growing internal opposition to President Mills will not inure to the benefit of the key insiders leading the attack, but may rather result in a possible return of the opposition NPP to power.

“The blow which will send NDC to the canvas will not come from the New Patriotic Party, it will not come from the Convention People’s Party, it will be a self-inflicted blow; it will be an NDC blow which will send the NDC to the canvas,” he warned.

“I do not know how the regime is going to deal with this problem, but quite frankly, opponents of the regime are very happy with this situation. The regime itself does not appear to have understood the full implications of this internal insurgency; they don’t seem to realize that this can send them to the canvas, they don’t seem to realize that if the current trend continues their task of winning the next election is going to be far more difficult than it has ever been,” he said.

The chances of the NDC retaining power in 2012 are getting slimmer by the day with the ruling party’s own media, elements, apologists and propagandists all doubting their ability to win the general elections.

Since coming into office about 19 months ago, the government has not known peace within the rank and file of the NDC as leaders are caught up in the web of power struggle with others accusing the President of presiding over a ‘go-slow’ ‘Team B’ government some of whom are said to be ‘boot lickers’ and ‘greedy bastards’.

Some members including the sacked National Youth Council Co-ordinator, Sekou Nkrumah have even suggested that President Mills against Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for the 2012 elections would portend danger for the ruling NDC and had gone further to ask the NDC leadership to change President Mills for a ‘charismatic leader.’

A pro-NDC newspaper Daily Post has stated the Mills-led government “is in a hurry to go back into opposition.”

In a recent publication, Daily Post lambasted the party saying “So, they damn the founder of the party, leave the NPP’s machinery in government intact, ignore their financiers, ignore media houses friendly to their cause and tell anyone within the party who dissents to “go to hell.”

“As for the foot-soldiers, the police are being told to arrest them. What a government!”

It went on: “Before the 2008 elections, could they have damned the founder, ignored their financiers and directed the police to arrest their foot-soldiers? So it is; what the party took serious before it got into power, now it ignores.”

Daily Post made it clear to President Mills and his NDC government that “providing school uniforms for needy pupils, defraying the TOR debt and lowering inflation among others are not big enough to win the Mills government the 2012 elections. If they were, the NPP, after implementing the NHIS, School Feeding, LEAP, NYEP and Metro-mass among others, would have won the 2008 elections.”

Kofi Adams, Deputy General Secretary of the NDC and spokesman for Former President Rawlings and his family, has also emphasized that the factionalism within the NDC is real.

He was however quick to point out that factionalism should not contribute to the break-up of the party adding that it should rather be harnessed to the advantage of the party while at the same time cautioning that perceptions of factionalism could result in the party’s downfall.

While bemoaning factionalism within the party at a time when President Mills needed the support of every NDC member to make the government succeed, Mr. Adams was virtually canvassing support for former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings to become the party’s flag bearer when the latter has not ‘officially’ declared her intention to contest President Mills in the NDC primary.

Extolling the virtues of the former First Lady on XFM owned by Herbert Mensah, a pal of the Rawlingses,’ Mr. Adams had said “I have seen many presidents in Africa and other parts of the world who do not have even a quarter of the experience she has gathered and the kind of work that she has done.”