The 2016 flag bearer of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Mr. Ivor Kobina Greenstreet, has said a post-mortem is underway within the CPP to determine the steps the party will take to be truly relevant in the political space.
He disclosed that the party was expecting to perform better in the 2016 election than it did.
The CPP flag bearer polled 0.24 per cent of total valid votes cast and the party also lost its sole parliamentary seat in the polls.
Speaking in an interview with Class News, Mr. Greenstreet said: “We all fail sometimes before we succeed, especially in the political domain. Buhari tried a number of times before becoming President, same with Professor Mills and the current President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t perform poorly. We expected to have performed far better, even though we performed better than some individuals who have contested before. Those include Dr Edward Mahama… and Jacob Osei Yeboah,” he stated.
Representation in Parliament
“But certainly, we were expecting to do much better and we lost our representation in Parliament. We were not able to regain seats we had held before, so these failings are going to be part of the components of this report that is being worked on and this time we hope that the reports will not just be lamentations but also offer solutions as to what steps we have to take to be truly relevant in the political space because at the moment, it appears it’s a duopoly.
“It’s not a multiparty democracy and so how do we become part of that space and truly relevant politically; not just to be heard making minor noises here and there but to actually be properly part of the political process?” he asked.
In his view, for the CPP to be relevant, “it may require us to look at the structure, not just our internal issues and problems but the structure of the political space that exists…in terms of all the so-called Nkrumaist parties and why they are not together, what they have to do to be seen to be serious or to be taken seriously.”
Hike in filing fees horrifying
Mr. Greenstreet, has attributed the party’s abysmal performance in the 2016 parliamentary election to the increment in filing fees for candidates from GH¢1,000 to GH¢10,000.
The CPP lost its sole parliamentary seat in the polls while the flag bearer polled 0.24 per cent of total valid votes cast.
Speaking to Class News’ Kwesi Parker-Wilson in an exclusive interview, Mr. Greenstreet said the high cost of the filing fee threw the party’s budget off track.
“What made things difficult for us at a point in time and put us totally off track was the Electoral Commission (EC) raising filing fees, especially for parliamentary [candidates] from the GHS¢1,000 that it was in the last election all the way by 1000 per cent to GH¢10,000. So we had budgeted for maybe 100 per cent increase or 150 per cent increase and then [expected] it will move to GH¢2000 but it moved to GH¢10,000 per candidate,” he stated.
He said despite the financial constraint, it would have been disastrous for the party to have taken a decision to drop some parliamentary candidates to save funds.
Opposition political parties
“If right at that point we had decided to stay out of the 220 MPs we were going to ask 100 of them to step aside because filing fees were so high, I think that would have created a lot of problems for us. All of those individuals would feel as though the party didn’t want to back them… So that extent by the EC to raise the filing fees for us was anti-progress of democratic governance and for us an abuse of their discretionary power.”
Mr. Greenstreet further disclosed that apart from fighting opposition political parties, there were people within the CPP that wanted the party to fail.
“We were horrified and shocked when those filing fees came out, which we had to find GHS10,000 for 220 people – GHS2.2million – and ordinarily it would have been better to utilise those funds in specific places where you will have greater impact on the ground and retain some seats and even garnered more votes. But by that point in time, we were also fighting not only the external political battle but an internal political battle.
There were many people who clearly within our set up did not want to see us succeed,” he noted.
He described the backstabbers who wanted his failure within the party as “normal in politics”, citing previous happenings in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to make his case.
“If you look at what happened in the NPP, they removed their own chairman and general secretary right in the middle of their campaign…so because of that situation too, [we struggled in the polls].”
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