The 45-year old leader of the party that vowed to put the Ghanaian first; the redoubtable politician who, perhaps, dealt the biggest psychological blow to the electoral chances of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in December 2000 by leading a breakaway team to form the National Reform Party, is retiring from politics.

Goosie Tanoh, the far from bad-looking politician who won nationwide admiration for the positive way in which he carried his election campaign, made this shocking revelation in a frank three-hour talk in Accra last Saturday, according to The Statesman.

Goosie during the interview (promised to be serialised by the paper) touched on several sensitive issues, including the 1982 murder of the three judges, the violent beginnings of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) and, the rift with his former close buddy, Jerry John Rawlings. He also expressed the view that the ruling NPP can lay no serious claim to understanding the mechanisms of capitalism, and that Kufuor’s ministry is yet to devise and carve out any meaningful policy direction of relevance to the people besides pursuing, in substance, the old agenda set out by the NDC administration.

A political heavyweight who has been performing with marked intrigue on the big stage of the political arena since joining the (PNDC) at an early age in 1983, Goosie Tanoh rose to lofty heights and was even touted as the most probable electoral asset to continue the NDC’s incumbency after Rawlings. The man who left the NDC with several others under a blaze of publicity to form the Reform Party says he is hanging up his gloves to spend more time with his wife and two children aged 13 and 12 and his fledging commodities export business.