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Nyaho-Tamakloe: NPP needs to be tolerant

Dr Nyaho Nyaho-TamakloeDr Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe has cautioned the New Patriotic Party to be tolerant of dissenting views.

He said many years down the lane, if the NPP could not accept free speech then that was worrying.

In an interview, he told the Daily Graphic that the NPP was founded at the dawn of the 4th Republic of Ghana by a group of people who strongly believed in liberal democracy as an ideology, and that he had the conviction that post independence Ghana must be a prosperous society in which individuals could thrive in an environment free from repression.

They also believed that as a post colonial society, Ghana’s natural resource of wealth must be made available to all its citizens and were of the conviction that the colonial era disparities in development between southern and northern Ghana must be eliminated, as such it was becoming worrying that a party set up on the principles of free speech seem to be suppressing dissenting views.

Intolerance, according to NNT breeds indiscipline which in turn breeds violence; So where are we heading to, he asked.

In the opinion of NNT, the NPP had become so intolerant that it does not want to hear alternative views.

“This will breed violence,” he cautioned

Internal Dynamics

On what has changed within the body politic of NPP, Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe said “what is happening now in the party is a bit strange.”

He said the NPP was breading a crop of politicians who appeared to be very intolerant and did not either believe in the tradition or did not know the tradition that had been set up by the forefathers of the party.

He said that this rise of intolerance in the NPP was making mockery of what the founding fathers of the party stood for insisting that the founding fathers believed in dissenting views.

They argued and debated issues; engaged in the substance of the dissenter but they never attacked issues, positions and principlesm, he recalled and further pointed out that they rather debated ideas and never attacked people or personalities.

In the view of Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe modernisation and tolerance were the keys to success in contemporary politics and this is what the new breed of politicians in our party must learn If they really want to get far in politics.

“I am calling on Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo to bring them to order because as defacto leader he has to call them to order,” he urged

According to Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe, Nana Akufo-Addo’s continuous silence would not augur well for his personal well-being and that of the party.

“One may also ask why the senior members of the party like Mr Odoi Sykes, C.K. Tedem, K.G. Osei Bonsu, Ama Busia, Gifty Ayeh, aka Daavi Ama among others, are not speaking and they have been silent for too long a time.

These are senior members of the party and none of them are speaking; It is worrying,” he stated.

Problems facing NPP

Today, according to Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe the biggest challenge facing the NPP was not the ongoing election challenge in the Supreme Court,.

Irrespective of the results of the challenge, he said that the NPP would continue to be a force to reckon with in Ghana politics.

The biggest challenge, he said was rather the NPP’s ability to maturely deal with the amplification by its opponents of real or imaginary conflict within the party at this crucial moment in Ghana’s politics stressing that “The unity of NPP must be safeguarded.”

The NPP as a political party, he said, must also position itself strategically so that regardless of the outcome of the election petition challenge “we shall never be found wanting, particularly in grassroot mobilisation at various levels, branch, constituency, regional and national.”.

At the moment, in the view of Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe “the NPP functionaries are not working; we are static while our opponents are working and organising at the branch to national levels” saying “all our attention is in the Supreme Court.

I believe in the petition trial. It is my wish that we come out victorious in the court case. However, the whole party should not be in the Supreme Court . We should be working.

He said that politics was dynamic, and that “we were not going to be held by one particular thing or issue while all other things came to a halt or standstill.”

These are my worrying, he stressed.Already, Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe said that the NPP had missed two by-elections which in his view the party could have won with a little readiness.

As a result of bad policy, we failed to take advantage of the by-election, he quipped, saying the party could have been in the Supreme Court and participated in the by election simultaneously.

He called on the rank and file of the party to remain firm and be bold, assuring that the NPP as a giant party would succeed.

By: Kobby Asmah

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