Goosie Tanoh
Augustus Obuadum Goosie Tanoh, founder of the defunct National Reform Party (NRP), appears to be resurrecting his dead political career and has fired at those he claimed “only see the state as a vehicle to serve and advance the interests of an acquisitive few by fair or foul means.”
He is rumoured to be interested in leading the NDC in the 2020 presidential election, and he has started making himself visible to the public through the media.
He left the NDC ahead of the crucial 2000 general election, which the party lost to then opposition NPP, to form his own NRP, and since then many ardent NDC members have not forgiven him because they claim his breakaway led to the defeat of the NDC which brought President J.A. Kufuor and Alhaji Aliu Mahama to power.
Fresh Article
He has written an article which clearly shows that he wants to hit the political limelight again.
Should he enter the NDC flagbearer contest and go ahead to win, it will be the biggest shock in the party’s history because former President Mahama, who is highly tipped, is even facing stiff competition from other presidential hopefuls.
New NDC
He is calling for a new thinking in the NDC through the empowerment of the grassroots to be able to save Ghana because he thinks those at the helm “have certainly no intention or commitment to implementing an agenda of far-reaching social and economic reforms and a programme of positive transformation in the lives of the broad majority of Ghanaians.”
“Yes, as members of our once great party, we have a choice to be naive and forever be relegated to the margins of political and economic power, or we can construct a path of struggle and ultimate triumph for the cause and principles we cherish,” he said.
Powerful Force
Mr. Tanoh further said “in the next few days, weeks and months ahead we, through scientific analysis and practical systematic organisation, will concentrate our efforts in joining others who share our views to rebuild NDC to become, once again, the powerful political force it once was. We do so in the belief that the NDC can and will be a vehicle for the kind of change and transformation that many of us, who were there at its birth, have yearned for all these years.”
He said “we are at a time and moment in our country’s history that requires profound and far-reaching new thinking and new ways of doing things,” adding “it also requires a new breed of disciplined leadership unswervingly committed to serve Ghana and Ghanaians, in particular, our youth, women, our working and middle classes, our farmers whose living standards and security of livelihood are in perpetual free fall.”
True Agenda
“It is a time when we must pull ourselves up to become visionary, focused and determined to execute a true agenda of social justice and economic and social transformation,” he said.
He claimed the hope of the 1992 Constitution “has been replaced by a deep skepticism and lack of faith.”
“We, as a party, have a historic duty to rise up and resist these tendencies that have brought us to this place of despair that not only threaten to impoverish us all but leave in their wake a poisonous mediocrity where merit, dedicated principled service and ability are sacrificed at the altar of sycophancy, cronyism and debilitating theft.”
He said the NDC can regain its “preeminent standing as a mass-based political organisation through sustained and disciplined effort,” adding “organisation, education and total mobilisation of the grassroots to achieve real democracy, national self-reliance, social justice and fairness in our country is our unyielding cause.”
By William Yaw Owusu