CPP at 68 - Unity holds the key
One of the oldest political parties in the country, the Convention People’s Party (CPP), was 68 years old on June 12, 2017.
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The party assumed the reins of government in the First Republic under the country’s first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah. During its nine years in power from 1957 to 1966 before the party was overthrown in a military coup d’etat, it gained a number of landmark achievements.
Achievements
These include the construction of the Tema Harbour and Tema town, Akosombo Hydroelectric Dam, state farms and a number of Trust secondary schools.
The CPP under President Nkrumah also undertook massive state industrialisation under the Ghana Industrial Holding Companies (GIHOC), as well as free education.
However, there were a number of excesses which brought about the coup of 1966.
Excesses of CPP
Some of the excesses include the Preventive Detention Act after the Kulungugu bomb explosion on Dr Nkrumah, the declaration of a one-party state, human rights abuses and corruption.
Dr Nkrumah also stifled press freedom with draconian laws such as the Criminal Libel Law which haunted the press in the country until it was repealed by the Kufuor administration.
Since the coup d’etat of 1966 when the party was disbanded and proscribed, it has struggled to remain relevant in the governance process of the country.
Governance process
The closest the party came to power was in the Third Republic in 1979 when an offshoot of the party, the People’s National Party (PNP), under Dr Hilla Limann assumed the reins of government though it was shortlived.
The Limann government after serving for just over two years was also overthrown in a military coup in December 1981 by Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings.
Since then, the party has been wallowing in political wilderness and all efforts to unite the Nkrumaist parties under one CPP banner has continued to remain elusive, particularly in the Fourth Republic.
Voting pattern
The CPP in the Fourth Republic has participated in all the seven elections but its performance has been abysmal. For example in the 2000 general election, the party’s Presidential Candidate, Professor George Hagan, polled 115,541 votes, the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), another Nkrumaist party led by Mr Dan Lartey, had 67,504 votes while Dr Edward Mahama who led the People’s National Convention (PNC), also an Nkrumaist party, polled 189,657 votes.
The two Nkrumaist parties which participated in the 2004 general election - PNC and CPP - polled 165,375 and 85,958 votes respectively out of a total turnout of 8,374,442 voters.
Parliamentary seats
The performance of the CPP and its offshoot parties remained quite poor; however, the PNC won two parliamentary seats while the CPP won one parliamentary seat in 2008.
Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom who led the CPP in 2008 garnered 112,673 votes, Dr Mahama of the PNC had 73,618 votes while Mr Ward Brew of the Democratic People’s Party (DPP) polled 8,367 votes out of a total of 8,224 926 voters.
The 2012 election happened to be the worst election year for the Nkrumaist parties when after high expectations, Dr Abu Sakara of the CPP only garnered 20,109 votes, Mr Hassan Ayariga of the PNC polled 24,621 votes while Mr Henry Herbert Lartey of the GCPP had 38,250 votes.
Mr Ivor Greenstreet took over from Dr Sakara as the CPP flag bearer in 2016 and managed to increase the presidential fortunes of the party by polling 25,076 votes while Dr Mahama who contested the presidential race on the ticket of the PNC got 20,910 votes.
With this unimpressive performance of the Nkrumaist parties, the unity talks among them have been touted by many governance experts and students of politics as the only last hope for the CPP to do better and recapture power in future elections.
