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To paraphrase the late Professor P.A.V. Ansah, I want to go to town today on my own party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the leadership of President Mahama. Who am I? I am a member of the NDC in the Sissala West Constituency in the Upper West Region. I contributed my widow�s mite to the 2012 campaign of my then Presidential Candidate, John Mahama, and then Parliamentary Candidate, Amidu Sulemani, currently Minister for Roads and Highways. THE NDC SHOULD BEGIN ITS SOUL SEARCHING NOW After 11 months of President Mahama in office the reality is that: Nko Yie. It is not well. We all discuss our frustrations with the President�s leadership in private. In public we pretend that all is well; we are on course. Let us stop the deceit, refuse to suffer in silence, speak out and demand that the President and party leadership change direction. Whilst I agree with my General Secretary, Asiedu Nketiah, on his call for a ceasefire on the recent fracas between Hon. Alban Bagbin and President Mahama there are larger issues at stake beyond the two personalities which have to be debated publicly without the baring of �sharp teeths�. Our friends in the NPP after losing the election petition are busy doing their own Di Wo Fie Asem in preparation for 2016. This is the best time for the NDC to carry out its own soul searching when the NPP�s attention is concentrated on their internal matters. LEADERSHIP IS EVERYTHING �Leadership is cause, everything else is effect�. That says Professor Stephen Adei, the man who transformed the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) from another failing and subvented public institution into the successful self financing school it is today. Permit me to break a taboo. Our elders say you do not speak ill of a dead person. However we in the NDC must face up to the fact that the late President Mills (may his soul rest in peace) provided poor leadership to us whilst in office. President Mahama so far has turned out to be no better. In marketing there is something called a brand. Today it is as if the NDC is only made up of creaters, looters, sharers and talkers whose only interest in political office is to further their personal lot. Our 2012 campaign slogan Ede Be Keke has now become Ye Be Di Keke. There are many men and women in the NDC, both young and old, who have the intellect, integrity and competence to contribute to the Better Ghana agenda. Under President Mills, and now President Mahama, too few of these persons were called to serve. Today the chorus from our political opponents is that the NDC does not have capable people. The few of them in government have an uphill task making a positive difference in the lives of the people of Ghana and the political fortunes of our party. President Mahama and the current party leadership have not created space for such people to play a role both in government and within the party. The majority of us have chosen to be silent and hypocritical about the state of affairs in the NDC. In typical Ghanaian fashion we are praying and hoping that things will get better someday without any purposeful action. We call ourselves social democrats. How many people in the leadership of the party and government today understand what this means? I dare say, very few. The NDC was born out of a revolution or coup, whatever you chose to call it. I was a teenager for a good part of the Provision National Defence Council (PNDC) era. I recall the song �Power Belongs to the People...Forever�. I remember the slogan �Probity and Accountability�. I appreciate that not everyone in the then PNDC government lived up to those ideals. However those songs and slogans of old did indicate that the PNDC stood for something. What does the NDC believe in today? Nothing! We must rediscover those values we lost along the way. Anytime I converse with past functionaries of the then PNDC they talk of the discipline that existed in government in those days. Everyone, including the good and bad, watched his or her step. The impunity in government today was alien to them. PRESIDENT MAHAMA SHOULD REDEEM HIMSELF AND THE NDC President Mahama must not only change from first gear to fifth gear, he must change direction. If he speeds up in the same direction he has been heading for the last 11 months Ghana is heading for trouble. The Arab Spring which has put various countries in North Africa and the Middle East in turmoil was triggered on 17 December, 2011 by the singular act of a 26 year old young man in a remote town in Tunisia setting himself on fire in protest against social injustice. Ghana is not far from the brink. It will take only one person somewhere to press the trigger (not a gun) to begin an upheaval. If this happens, the people of Ghana, NDC supporters included, will be losers. As we are witnessing today in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen such social eruptions inevitably turn violent. No government, civilian or military, is able to control events. After being voted out in 2000 the good people of Ghana gave us another opportunity in 2008 and 2012 to demonstrate what we can do for them. We are on course to wasting that opportunity, losing the 2016 general election and staying in opposition for a very long time. President Mahama has 3 more years to redeem himself and the NDC. He should do what is right. If we lose 2016 as a result, so be it. Ghanaians will compare and contrast with whoever wins 2016 and give us another chance someday. WITHOUT CHANGE THE NDC WILL ATROPHY My party leaders must appreciate that we live in different times. About 60% of Ghana�s population is less than 25 years old according to the 2010 Census. There were 28 million cell phone subscribers at the end of September 2013; says the National Communications Authority. More than 10 million people had subscribed to data services. The number of actual mobile phone and data users is far less though because of the widespread use of multiple SIMs. WhatsApp is becoming the primary means of exchanging news, gossip and sending goodwill messages to family, friends and associates. Shops that sell birthday, valentine and get well cards have seen their sales reduce. The ways and means of managing and organizing a political party which has led us to winning two successive general elections will not work in the future. We need new ideas, new perspectives and new methods in the NDC. More than 150 years ago, Charles Darwin, the man who put forward the theory of evolution said �it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change�. My party leaders must embrace change and transform the NDC or else� Nicholas Issaka Gbana [email protected] http://www.facebook.com/n.issaka.gbana