Augustus Goosie Tanoh, a leading member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has said the party is currently suffering from an “identity crisis” that makes it difficult to differentiate between it and the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

“NDC is facing what is called Identity crisis. People cannot tell the difference between  the NDC and the NPP  and we what we are saying is that we must go back  to our founding values , our founding principles…that we are a social democratic party,” Goosie has said.

Goosie, a well experienced political strategist,  is making this statement at the same time that a former National Vice Chair of the same party , Dan Abodakpi, is also saying publicly that  the NDC can never win and return to political power if the party continues to copy and walk in the shadows of the NPP.

He said the NDC has become “ a huge elephant standing on clay feet”

Goosie and Abodakpi, considering their long years of experience in the NDC leadership, certainly know what they are saying and it cannot be a mere coincidence that both are speaking in consonance and  publicly for that matter. Something is certainly wrong that needs to be fixed within the umbrella family if the party desires to become an attractive political commodity, appealing enough to win over 50 plus one percent of valid votes, come election 2024.

“Comrades, I just want to remind ourselves of what our founder told us in 2016 at Cape Coast that we should not under any circumstance try to mimic the NPP. They have a tradition they are proud of, they will never move away from that tradition , they can metamorphose  one way or the other  but they will hold on to their tradition, ” Mr. Abodakpi noted over the weekend at a forum organized by some leading members of the party on securing NDC’s future

He added “We are from a different stock, from a different ideological origin. We are social democrats. We may pretend we want to copy them but we will not be successful. It is so painful that we piloted primary health care programme only for Kufuor to come and take ownership of it.  So many social interventions that we have discussed but we haven’t implemented them. These are some of the challenges facing this party.”

SPECIFICS

The former NDC Vice chairman said it is worrisome that the party has deviated from its founding principles of an all inclusive participatory democracy in Ghana and now shifting towards the NPP type of ideology: “It is unfortunate that even though we are the originators of that idea (formation of Unit Committees) our party today is not firmly rooted at the unit or branch level. We have become a huge elephant, not the NPP elephant. A huge elephant standing on clay feet,” he noted

He continued: “Participation as we thought from the beginning of the revolution was that, it should be inclusive; that the mass of our people from whom power is derived must not only be policy takers but must be involved in policy evolution from the grassroots.

“I’m sure if I ask my colleague from Tema Central that I want to visit her branches today, the branches will be there in name but not really there. So is the case in my Keta Constituency, so is the case everywhere and that explains the reason why victory will be beckoning us in 2020 and come to the finishing line; that victory will be taken from our hands”