NDC not an Nkrumaist party — CPP
The Political Committee of the Convention People’s Party has stated that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is not an Nkrumaist party.
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According to the committee, the historical link between the NDC and the CPP is that “it was the NDC that dismembered the CPP in the run up to the elections of 1992 by financing the formation of many parties in the Nkrumaist tradition.”
Throwing further light on what the Chairman of the CPP, Ms Samia Nkrumah, told the Daily Graphic in an interview that the “NDC is a ‘corrupt’ version of the CPP,” the committee explained that “this is important for our party because we view it as an opportunity to inform the people of Ghana on the wide gulf and differences between the CPP and the NDC, and expose the claim of the NDC as a centre left or an Nkrumaist party.”
A signed statement by the Chairman of the Political Committee, Mr Ekow Duncan, and the Secretary of the Committee, Mr Samuel Owusu Afriyie, said that there was a wide gulf between the NDC and the CPP regarding policy prescription for the development of Ghana.
According to the statement, the NDC subscribes to the development policy of structural adjustment proposed to underdeveloped economies by the Western industrialised developed countries in exchange for their "development assistance."
The development philosophy of the CPP, the statement pointed out, was guided by the principle of self-determination and self-reliance for the attainment of an internally sustained growth and development.
According to the statement, the NDC as part of its adoption of the development policy of structural adjustment had pursued the policy of trade liberalisation that had impeded the growth of the manufacturing and agricultural sectors of the Ghanaian economy.
“The effect of the policy of trade liberalisation has been widespread youth unemployment as many of our manufacturing and agricultural enterprises collapsed in competition with subsidised imports from developed and other emerging countries,” the statement added.
According to the statement, the CPP is committed to the policy of the development of the capacity of the private sector to compete in the production of goods and services to substitute imports, satisfy domestic demand and export and for competition in the global economy.
In the view of the CPP, the NDC has implemented the policy of stabilisation that includes cut backs in government expenditure in employment creation, resulting in the insensitive policy of freeze on employment and wages.
It further said that the CPP’s alternative development policy was a commitment to full employment by fiscal intervention of the imminent CPP government to support the private, public/private sectors to develop the productive resources of the country to satisfy domestic demand and export.
“These strategic resources that will improve our trade balance, control inflation and exchange rate depreciation include sugar, brick and tile, glass, aluminium, bast fibre, cotton and coffee production, among others,” it added.
The statement also pointed out that it was obvious that the NDC was neither a centre left nor Nkrumaist party in policy choices and orientation but a centre right party same as the New Patriotic Party with whom it shares the common policy of structural adjustment for which they hope to receive "development assistance."
In this respect, unlike the CPP, the development achievements of the NPP and NDC can only be transient, parlous and non-transformational. The NDC and NPP are client parties of neo-colonialism governing the country to protect and preserve a neo-colonialist state.
The CPP, the statement stressed, was committed to national independence, and economic freedom to demonstrate that the black man is capable of managing his own affairs.
