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| NPP Leadership not a haven for gerontocrats |
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| Posted on: 2007-Jan-11 GNA |
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The New Patriotic Party, the new name for the Danquah-Busia family, is certainly on the ascendancy. But, this was a political family that was evicted from power in 1972 and remained in opposition for the next three decades. Essentially, it is also a family of great minds - both young and old.
The situation can be simplified and juxtaposed to what happened when Ghanaian universities were closed down for two academic years.
There was a backlog which could only be addressed by forming some kind of queue based on those who were first on the waiting list. But even in that case, there were a few instances where some exceptional students managed to jump the queue. It gradually normalised through a few years' process of mixing the two 'generations" of rookies progressively.
Some of the brains from the Progress Party years who are still active today are epitomised in the person of the President of the Republic, John Agyekum Kufuor. Indeed, one of the wisest heads in the NPP is J H Mensah, Finance Minister in the Busia administration, who was last year eased out of Cabinet.
It is a fact that the average age of the Kufuor Government has reduced noticeably between 2001 and now. The promotion of people like Joe Ghartey, Asamoah Boateng, O B Amoah, Joseph Nayan and Awudulai Razak can be seen as a deliberate move to prepare the next generation of NPP leaders for the ultimate task of state leadership.
There is evidence that the NPP leadership is a bit long in the tooth. But, talk of an NPP gerontocracy (rule of the elderly) is neither supported by the conceptual reality that the NPP is a conservative party nor the generational constitution of the upper echelons of a party – which has Mac Manu and Ohene Ntow as Chairman and General Secretary, whose combined ages is below a century.
As mentioned above, the long years of inaction was such that political power within the ruling class has accumulated with age.
After all, Jones Ofori-Atta, Harona Esseku, J H Mensah, J A Kufuor, I C Quaye and others were in their thirties and forties holding big positions under Prof Busia. Thus, any hint of gerontocracy in the NPP can be said to have emerged not from the onset but through the circumstances of Ghanaian politics.
A typical example of this is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, founded by a 24-year-old man, who in 1835 constituted the first Quorom of the Twelve Apostles with members ranging in age from 23 to 35.
With the growth of the church the age at which officials were named to the highest bodies continued to rise. The church is actively led by Gordon B Hinkley, a man who remembers the day his father replaced the family horse-wagon with a Ford Model T.
However, the government cannot be described as, to borrow Maureen Dowd of The New York Times words, a pack of gray-haired, gray-faced, gray-suited and gray-spirited fogies.
In this era of Viagra, longer average life spans and geriatric astronauts, it has been argued that suggesting that advanced age might diminish one’s capacity is a political and cultural taboo.
Gerontocracy may go with conservatism because its strength is seen as its stability. But, Ghana and her institutions of state have to cope with rapid change, and this requires mature, radical and effective leadership.
Gerontocracy, the evidence shows, is well-established in most western democracies. In the UK, Germany, France and Italy, for instance, parliamentarians are disproportionately old, and positions of power within the Parliament - such as chairmanships of various committees - being usually bestowed upon the more experienced, i.e. older, Parliament members.
In our view, President Kufuor’s statement that the NPP is a conservative party and that people should serve their time should not be narrowly interpreted to mean that he does not see anybody from the under-sixty generation taking over after him. The Statesman is also of the view that when the President mentioned the immediate generation of leaders after him to be made up of the sixty-somethings of Akufo-Addo, Hackman, Addo Kufuor, Osafo-Maafo and co, he was not saying that those of a latter generation could not lead.
Indeed, The Statesman sees his mention of the next generation of Alan Kyerematen and Dan Botwe as rather an endorsement of their recognition as part of the party leadership and, therefore, meriting the right to contest for the highest office of the land through the NPP vehicle.
It would therefore not be fair and proper for the NPP to be described as ‘a haven for gerontocrats’.
It is our considered view that age is not as relevant as loyalty, experience, maturity, vision, decisiveness, reputation, character, authority, and all the other attributes of leadership.
If it takes a 35-year-old with the right attributes to move Ghana to the next level then his or her age should not be a factor. If it takes a mentally healthy septuagenarian to bring the required leadership to bear, then so be it.
Youthfulness, dynamism on the one hand, experience and maturity on the other hand need not be exclusively mutual, with the first possessed by the young and the other possessed by the old.
Age can but only be a number unless it comes with the requirements of the job.
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