Politics of Sunday, 28 January 2007

Source: Lens

Obed’s DFP In Limbo

As Mike Eghan & Others Head Home…

The CPP elements in the Democratic Freedom Party are taking advantage of the unmitigated pardon that has been granted by the CPP to its erring members and are returning to their mother party.

Comrade Mike Eghan, a leading light CPP, who was at one point taunted as a candidate for the Chairmanship of Dr. Obed Asamoah’s DFP, has welcomed the unconditional pardon granted by his mother party, the CPP.

Mike Eghan has confirmed, in a telephone interview with The Ghanaian Lens, that he has indeed returned to his mother party.

Asked what his return to the CPP, and that of other CPP elements in the DFP, means for that party, Mike Eghan sought to play down his involvement in the DFP, and said, “I have been in talks with the DFP about the political direction of the country. But I am now resolved to return to the CPP, and that is all that there is to it.”

Mike Eghan’s departure from the DFP is seen as a very big blow to that party’s fortunes, as it struggles to present itself as a broad-based party and not a mere collection of self-seeking elements from the NDC who have gathered to pursue an agenda that they could not pursue in their mother political party.

The Ghanaian Lens investigations have established that Mike Eghan and his colleague CPP elements in the DFP readily embraced the unconditional amnesty granted by the CPP since they were almost at the point of splitting with the DFP due to their inability to contain the autocratic tendencies of Dr. Obed Asamoah.

One of the CPP elements returning to the CPP from the DFP told The Ghanaian Lens, “we did not leave the CPP to help form the DFP only to allow Obed and his boys to lord it over us. We wanted things done right; and that includes broad participation prior to decision making. If we couldn’t tolerate autocratic tendencies in our mother parties, why should we tolerate it in the DFP?”

“As far as some of us are concerned, the unconditional amnesty granted by the CPP couldn’t have come at a better time, because we were beginning to feel that the DFP was not the freedom party that we had bargained for,” the returning CPP bigwig told The Ghanaian Lens.

Dr. Obed Asamoah’s DFP has been enjoying some level of respectability due to the reported affiliation of persons like comrade Mike Eghan and other CPP stalwarts.

The presence of Mike Eghan and other notable CPP stalwarts in the DFP, to a very large extent, helped to diminish the impression of that party as a collection of disgruntled NDC elements who are hell-bent on preventing the NDC from winning political power.