Outspoken National Democratic Congress (NDC) member and former Ambassador to Netherlands, Dr. Tony Aidoo has chided his party for failing to focus on policies.
The former NDC Director of Research and Monitoring revealed, he has lost interest in attending NDC congresses because "we never had time to discuss policies and programmes there".
Dr. Aidoo who was a member of the Consultative Assembly for the Drafting of the 1992 Constitution, made the comment while speaking at the National Conference on Rethinking Political Leadership in Ghana.
Dr. Tony Aidoo expressed worry that the failure of the party to focus on policies has seen it lose its social democratic character. Tony Aidoo's observation would find favour with aspects of an investigative report into the defeat of the NDC in the 2016 general elections.
The bulky report titled "Listening To The Voice Of The Grassroots" recommended that "steps ought to be taken by the party to reconnect itself properly to our social democratic roots and the principal actors in these social democratic roots"
It also recommended that "steps ought to be taken to strengthen research and intelligence in the party. This should involve crowding in a larger body of the party's intellectual base which has not been particularly active in the past, this will help to support the party's research capacity".
NDC member, Dr Michael Kpessah Whyte in September 2017 also complained, the party is fearful of its intellectuals.
In an interview on Class FM, he said “some people have taken the idea of the party of the masses too far to mean that you don’t need the intellectuals necessarily to lead, and I think that it is probably one of our undoing as a party.
Since the Prof Kwesi Botchwey report was presented in June 2017, the NDC established an ideological school, Ghana Institute of Social Democracy (GISD) in August 2017.
The courses outlined in the module are the History of the National Democratic Congress (NDC); the Philosophy, Principles and Practice of Social Democracy; Political Leadership; and Party Organisation and Political Activism.
The opposition party is also preparing to hold its internal elections for National Executives in November with elections for flagbearer slated for December 7.