<<Print>>The Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Junior, has questioned which of the organs of the New Patriotic Party, NPP, was responsible for importing the three ex-South African police officers into Ghana to train the party’s cadres.
He said it would appear some individuals in the party took that decision and who must own up and defend their action rather than allow the party’s name to be dragged needlessly into a useless dispute, explaining that the party has offered too many different and changing stories as grounds for the importation.
Pratt, a panelist on Alhaji and Alhaji on Radio Gold, Saturday said an admission by the NPP’s Director of Communications, Nana Akomea, that he did not know about the issue of the party importing foreigners to train party people until news broke of the arrest of the ex-police officers, is significant in the search for the facts.
Among other explanations, the NPP has admitted it brought in the men to train its security operatives around flagbearer, Nana Akufo-Addo, in crowd control. “…What party organ decided to bring in the three South Africans to train party cadres? Was it the Steering Committee? Was it the National Council of Elders? Was it National Congress? Was it the General Secretary on his own? Was it the national chairman on his own? What organ of the party took that decision? Because if it is a party decision, then it means that the decision was taken by a legitimate and proper organ of the party.
“I’m wondering how any party organ which can take a decision to import ex-police officers into this country would exclude somebody like the Director of Communications,” he said.
Pratt who said he is neither a member of the NPP nor attends their meetings, explained that simple management practice suggests that the chief communicator of the NPP ought to be in steering committee and national executive committee meetings, among others.
“You see, it may well be, - and here, it is purely speculation because we don’t know the facts, so I’m engaged in pure speculation - it may well be that the decision to import the three ex-South African police officers was not a party decision. It may well be that some individuals within the party took that decision and that what the party is doing now, is appropriating the errors or decisions of those individuals in order to do damage control.”
He said should that be the case, then they are drawing the party unnecessarily into “some useless dispute”, saying “If the party didn’t take the decision, let those who took the decision hang, so that the party would be saved the embarrassment.”
Pratt said it appears to him that the attempt to get the party to own the decision of those individuals is accounting for the incoherent, “manyaaa like that” explanations, including at one point it is Captain Koda, at another point it is a private security company, and yet in another breadth it is the party and a private security company.
"Something must be wrong and I think it is proper to establish which of the organs of the party took the decision. And indeed if a proper and legitimate organ of the party took this decision formally, then there ought to be records, there ought to be records about how the decision was taken.”