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The Chairperson and leader of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Madam Samia Yaba Nkrumah, has opined that Ghana’s democracy will suffer if a ‘Third Force’ does not emerge.

“I fear for our democracy if the Third Force does not happen and we as a party will do whatever it takes to bring the Third Force into place,” she stated.

She was speaking in an interview in Accra on the outcome of the recent Talensi by-election in which the CPP supported the parliamentary candidate of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Dr Michael Wombeogo.

In that election, the National Democratic Congress candidate, Mr B T Baba, was declared the winner after he had garnered 10,366 votes to beat his closest contenders, Mr Wuni Thomas Pearson Duanab of the NPP and Dr Wombeogo Michael of the PNC, who got 6,846 and 6836 votes respectively.

Talensi was turned into a beehive of political activity when most of the top echelons of political parties criss-crossed the constituency to canvass for votes. There were accusations and counter-accusations of vote buying by the NDC and the NPP, while pockets of violence occurred.

Outcome of Talensi

But according to Madam Samia, the outcome of the Talensi by-election broke the myth of the duo-politics of the NDC and the NPP.

In her view, “despite time and resource constraint, with no money, use of weapons and intimidation, the results achieved by the PNC candidate demonstrated that the duo politics of the NDC and the NPP can be broken after all and does no longer exist on the ground.

“What Talensi has proven to all of us is that we need a ‘Third Force’ that is hinged on the philosophy of decolonisation, weaning ourselves off the dependency syndrome; this is true freedom, the right to decide what is good for us as a people and what is working for the people.”

Unified Nkrumaist party

According to Madam Samia Nkrumah, the ultimate objective of a unified Nkrumaist party was to win political power to radically change the economic order.

She stated that the smoothness with which the PNC and the CPP operated in Talensi during the by-election confirmed that on the ground “we are together.”
“We are one on the ground and we want to remain as such. We are going to keep up the momentum,” she told the Daily Graphic.

She, therefore, asked the good people of Ghana to elect a unified Nkrumaist party in 2016 to continue with the policies of national unity, equal opportunities, industrialisation and economic reconstruction for an independent and wealthy nation.

IMF development policy

According to Madam Samia, the failure of the IMF development policy prescriptions of liberalisation, stabilisation and privatisation to deliver quality life to the people was due to the fact that the policy recommendations sustained the financial and commercial interests of the developed economies at our cost.

In other words, Madam Samia Nkrumah said there were only two competing development policy choices for an electoral decision by the good people of Ghana.

She mentioned the first as the development policy of decolonisation of the CPP and the other as the IMF policy dictate of structural adjustment, currently in operation.

Madam Samia confirmed that the CPP was radically opposed to the development policy of structural adjustment adopted by the NDC and NPP because its implementation had led to the collapse of the manufacturing sector, low agricultural productivity, job losses, trade deficits, unsustainable debts and widespread poverty.