GHANA ELECTIONS: WHAT MAKES PAPA RUN?

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SIPDIS

DEPT FOR AF/W

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: GH KDEM PGOV PHUM PINS PREL
SUBJECT: GHANA ELECTIONS: WHAT MAKES PAPA RUN?

SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED


1. (SBU) SUMMARY. Papa Kwesi Nduom, presidential candidate
for the Convention Peoples Party (CPP),has managed to offend
most of the party's organizational leaders, and is running
his campaign with very little support from the rank and file.
According to Ivor Greenstreet, CPP's general secretary,
Nduom is running a one-man show with the aim of gaining media
attention for himself more than the party, and he is ignoring
the party's campaign workers at the regional and constituency
levels. He does not help to campaign for the party's
parliamentary candidates, and they in return are leaking
information to the media that is harming his campaign.
Greenstreet made little effort to hide his apathy for his
flagbearer's campaign, or his indifference to Nduom's
prospects. END SUMMARY


2. (U) On November 26, Poloff met with CPP General Secretary
Ivor Greenstreet to discuss the party's campaign and
prospects. Greenstreet was elected Secretary General of the
CPP at the same party conference in which Papa (Paa) Kwesi
Nduom was elected as the party's presidential candidate.
Greenstreet became involved in CPP politics in the 1990s.
His father-in-law was Jerry Rawlings' first vice president
(1992-96) in a coalition government, and Greenstreet ran
twice under the CPP banner in Accra for a parliamentary seat.
His wife was killed in a car accident in 1998, and
Greenstreet (who was at the wheel) was paralyzed and is now
wheel-chair bound.


3. (SBU) Poloff began the conversation by asking how Nduom
managed to become the party's flagbearer when most people had
assumed that the CPP's current patriarch, Agyeman Badu Akosa,
would get the party nod. Greenstreet initially talked about
Nduom's well-organized strategy at the party convention, but
soon made it clear that by organization he meant that Nduom
had bought the nomination with a methodical plan for paying
delegates for their votes. Since gaining the nomination,
however, Nduom has steadily alienated the party's core
members by ignoring or sidelining elected party officers and
setting up parallel structures using only family members and
a few trusted advisors. Nduom's son has begun running the
campaign in Central Region, without the knowledge or consent
of the national organizer or local representatives.


4. (SBU) Greenstreet said that Nduom's campaign is entirely
self-financed, and that money goes only to Nduom and his
chief campaign strategist, David Ampofo, who receives about
$5,000 a month to keep Nduom's name and image front and
center in the media. Although Nduom can't win, he hopes to
establish long-term viability for himself through media
recognition. What has angered party members is that Nduom
doesn't care about the party, and as a consequence, the party
has been unable to organize a single fund-raiser to support
parliamentary candidates, whom Nduom has left to their own
devices. When asked what Nduom hopes to accomplish with his
third-party run at the presidency, Greenstreet pointed to
Nduom's unbridled ambition and his lack of any standing with
either major party. Despite the fact that he headed up three
ministries in the Kufuor government, he could not overcome
his role as an outsider in the NPP, and could never have
hoped to wrest the nomination from loyal party members who
had been waiting patiently for decades. Thus the CPP was his
only possible vehicle to promote himself, even though he does
not really support the CPP's left of center political
philosophy. When asked about his debate performance, which
appeared to promote CPP's socialist agenda, Greenstreet said
that it was "just talk. He doesn't believe a word of it, but
he has to adhere to the party platform." Nduom's real goal,
according to Greenstreet, is to imprint his name and image in
Ghana's public consciousness, planting the seed for a
political future. He also hopes that if he can gain enough
votes to play a spoiler role, he may have some influence with
the winning party. (NOTE: Nduom has no chance of winning the
election, and by most accounts, he will likely garner no more
than five per cent of the vote. In the event, however, that
neither of the two major parties achieves a first-round
majority, Nduom could be influential, but only if he can
carry his voters to another party. END NOTE).


5. (SBU) As the campaign has progressed, the rift in the
CPP has broken out into the open, and Greenstreet maintains
that Nduom is now having to watch his back to avoid publicity
about party disunity. The first crack was exposed two months
ago, when Nduom tried to replace Freddy Blay (a popular CPP
MP from Western Region who made no secret of his lack of
enthusiasm for Nduom) with his own hand-picked candidate.
Blay took the party to court, and won a landmark decision
that determined that party candidates are chosen at the
constituency level, and not the national level. Nduom

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threatened to appeal, but later backed down and tried to
downplay the dispute with Blay. (NOTE: Because of his
antipathy toward Nduom, Blay is openly campaigning for the
NPP presidential candidate, an unpopular position that may
cost him his seat. It is possible that the CPP, which
currently holds three seats in Parliament, may be totally
shut out this year. Samia Nkrumah, daughter of Ghana's
founding father, is running on the CPP ticket in the Western
Region, but entered the campaign very late and is a long shot
to defeat a fairly strong NDC candidate in her consituency.
END NOTE)


6. (SBU) Last week, another CPP scandal hit the media as
Kwabena Bomfeh, the party's national youth organizer, went
public with a letter he sent to party chairman Ladi Nylander,
accusing Nduom of having made secret bargains for himself
with the two major parties. He said that Nduom was lobbying
with the NPP for the position of Ministry of Finance and the
right to name two deputy ministers, and with the NDC for the
Ministry of Local Government and a "ceasefire" on a Special
Fraud Office (SFO) investigation into alleged income tax
evasion as a result of Nduom's having falsely claimed U.S.
citizenship after he returned to Ghana. (NOTE: Nduom lived in
the United States from 1973-1991. He holds a B.A. in
Economics, an M.S. in Management and a Ph.D. in Service
Delivery Systems, all from the University of Wisconsin. He
worked for Deloitte Touche during most of the 1980s, and came
to Ghana in 1991 as a managing partner and Chairman of
Deloitte's Africa office. END NOTE) When questioned about
Bomfeh's accusation, Greenstreet admitted that the charges
were valid, and said that he had in fact seen the letter
Nduom had written to President Kufuor proposing the deal.


7. (SBU) Nduom's lack of organization and poor planning,
Greenstreet said, have left the party in disarray just as the
elections are coming down to the wire. He is way out ahead
of the party apparatus, fending for himself, and at the same
time, leaving CPP's parliamentary candidates on their own to
fight for their survival. He has played the media
brilliantly, and gained much momentum after a good showing in
the first presidential debate, but his campaign is completely
devoid of any grassroots structure. "We are non-existent on
the ground," Greenstreet said, "and without constituency and
regional support, you can't translate media hype into votes."
Even worse, he added, is that discontent among party
stalwarts over lack of resources has created a backlash.
After an Nduom rally, he said, party members are more
disheartened and demotivated than before the tour, because
they feel they have been left out.


8. (SBU) COMMENT: Poloff went into this meeting expecting
the CPP general secretary to hew to the party line, hoping
only that he would not insult our intelligence by insisting
that Nduom could actually win the election (as the candidate
himself has been saying). Instead, we were treated to a
totally candid assessment of a party's implosion from a high
ranking insider who obviously has been off the party
reservation for some time. Although Greenstreet restrained
himself from open criticism of Nduom, he made it perfectly
clear that he had less than zero respect for his candidate.
His demeanor was more disheartened and disappointed than
bitter, like someone so fed up with the course of events and
feeling so powerless to change them that he had simply
decided to mentally check out. Greenstreet did not say what
the future held for him or his party (his salary, like all
four general secretaries of parties with seats in Parliament,
is paid for by a grant from the Institute for Economic
Affairs). He did surmise, however, that should Nduom not
rise to the level of a spoiler in the election, he would be
completely out in the woods politically with nowhere to turn.
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