General News of Saturday, 3 May 2003

Source: Chronicle

NDC Will Collapse -Nyaho Tamakloe

Dr N. Nyaho Tamakloe, leading member of the new patriotic party (NPP) has predicted the collapse of the national Democratic Congress (NDC) After the 2004 general elections which he also believe his party, the NPP, will win “and win massively”.

Dr Nyaho Tamakloe was speaking to the Chronicle on Saturday at his office in Accra in an interview. Explaining why he believed the party was going to extinct, the leading member said the founder and the father of the NDC on whom the spirit and momentum of the party develops has never believed in democratic governance and constitutional rule “hence does not understand politics, let alone democracy and the way political parties function as an organic force.”

Accusing ex-president Jerry John Rawlings of having created serious problems for this nation during his 20-year rule, the old politician referred to Jerry’s somersault in 1992 when he threw his military garb to don constitutional suit and tie as an act of desperation.

“In his desperate move to transform his military junta into a democratic set up, he had to hurriedly arrange and scheme to put in place parties over which to preside and felt that he should be allowed to continue even after he had been removed constitutionally, thereby exposing himself.

“The NDC is therefore a party of convenience, put in place at a particular time to serve a particular purpose” he further charged. He was therefore personally not surprised when an insider and spokesman of the party came public to say that the NDC is not a party, has never been one and probably will never be one, except a machine for winning elections. Recognising, however, the need for a viable opposition as a way of moving the nation forward politically and democratically, Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe said he cared little about the demise of the NDC and even urged all Ghanaians to work towards the end. He said he would rather urged the splinter groups in the CPP to unite fast enough and begin swallowing the NDC which is already in the throes of death.

Nyaho-Tamakloe said the NDC should remind themselves of the communist party and more recent, the Sadam Hussein regime-Political institutions founded on fear, intimidation, skullduggery and blood does not last urging the NDC to lean from the NPP the ways of keeping a party alive if it ever, at all, rise up. He stated that he was not surprised the way the NPP won one after the other all the six by-election.

“You know the NPP won a by-elections even when J.J. Rawlings and his NDC was the incumbent government”.

“I was with the Vice President in the Central Region the last by-election in Gomoa East. On the ground, it was very clear that the NDC is not a political party.” It is totally dying in the rural areas if it totally not dead.