Audio Attachment Listen to Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom's proposal for change

The flag bearer of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom says he is in the presidential race to become the next president of Ghana.

Dr Nduom who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Komenda-Edina Eguafo-Abirem Constituency of the Central Region said he is convinced he has “something positive” to offer his country.

Dr Nduom who featured at an encounter in Accra on Wednesday organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), said his party has already chosen a positive path to the race and is working actively to garner more support to oust the current government.

The Wednesday encounter is one of four being organised by the IEA for the four major political parties in the country to enable the electorate critically analyse the vision and policies the various parties would pursue if given a governing mandate.

Despite the CPP’s perennial low performance in national elections, the flag bearer says the party is now equipped with the right itenary to govern and would continue to make a compelling case for a bid to win power come December.

“I have said and I am doing it; conducting a campaign of presenting ideas and solutions that my party, the Convention Peoples Party and I have to solve Ghana’s problems,” he stated.

Outlining what would be one of his policies to improve the lot of Ghanaians, Dr Nduom said he hopes to churn out an economy with a per capita income of at least $5,000 in the next five to 10 years.

He said the CPP would declare a new revolution of industrialisation and assured: “Ghanaians must own the shares.”

“No nation has been able to break out of poverty on the backs of exporting raw materials to feed factories abroad,” he stated.

Also high on his agenda was energy, and he expressed dissatisfaction with government’s granting of oil concessions to foreign companies as well as its failure to cushion the ordinary citizen from the rough edges of global oil price hikes.

The CPP at a crunch meeting on Tuesday agreed to enter into an alliance with the Peoples National Convention (PNC), in a bid to make a stronger case for victory in the December polls. Both parties trace their lineage to Nkrumahism, ideologies propounded by the nation's first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

Change!

	The CPP says it is not going to be anybody's whipping party

At the encounter in Accra carried live by Joy FM and the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation across the nation, Dr Nduom, at his eloquence best, said the system needed change and not continuity.

He said he had a “legislative agenda” intended to strengthen local government and Parliament, stressing his government would sponsor proposals for change, especially in government.

The party would sponsor legislation to remove the provision in the Constitution that allows ministers of state to also serve as Members of Parliament.

“Parliament must be seen as an important end in itself and not a stepping stone to join the executive,” he emphasised, arguing that members of the House deserved equal attention in the provision of infrastructure and administrative support to deliver on its mandate, just as the Executive, which he said cannot be more important that the law-making institution.

The CPP, he said, would weave all its development drives around ICT to spur the country into a modern economic giant comparable to the developed world.


Story by Fiifi Koomson