HIstorical Lies Exposed: NPP Is Not The Inheritor Of The UGCC

Logo of Ghana opposition party NPP

By Ekow Mensah

Over the last couple of years, some leading members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) have claimed that their party is the true inheritor of the traditions of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) which campaigned for the independence of Ghana.

This claim has turned out to be blatant lie.

Indeed, the historical evidence shows that only the Convention People Party (CPP) founded by Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah can be the true inheritor of the traditions of the UGCC.

A declaration issued by the leadership of the UGCC in Kumasi on Saturday, September 3, 1949 clearly shows that the NPP is miles away from the ideological position of the UGCC.

 The Declaration reads in part “The policy of the United Gold Coast Convention is based on the principles of Democratic Socialism and its objective will be the building up of the WELFARE STATE, that is to say, a state in which the wealth and the means of production are utilised for the welfare of the people”.

The full text of the declaration is published below;

UNITED GOLD COAST CONVENTION

The policy of the United Gold Coast Convention is based on the principles of Democratic Socialism and its objective will be the building-up of the WELFARE STATE, that is to say, a State in which the wealth and the means of production are utilized for the welfare of the people.

The United Gold Coast Convention believes in EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL and will strive to achieve it for the people, and it believes also in the GREATEST MEASURE OF FREEDOM FOR THE INDIVIDUAL within the framework of the WELFARE STATE.

And the United Gold Coast Convention hereby declares that it will pursue these as its policy in a self governing Gold Coast.       

EXPLANATORY STATEMENT.

The United Gold Coast Convention is the lodestar of Gold Coast national politics. It is the effective answer which the political genius of the Gold Coast people has found to their continued subordination to foreign domination and exploitation. And no political movement, no political organization, no political party, which fails to identify itself closely or remotely with the magic of its name and achievement has today any chance of winning the patronage of the people.

The ready acceptance of the Convention creed by the people is conclusive proof that it has given articulation and form .to the unexpressed feelings and aspirations of the entire nation and that its analysis of our social and political maladies is based upon a realistic appreciation and faithful interpretation of the physical and moral facts of our national existence.

The Convention agrees with some of the older l leader that the ills of Gold Coast society are not accidental and transitory but the natural and logical consequences of the Crown Colony system of Government.  But the Convention postulates further that Imperialism or the Crown Colony system of Government is itself, the result of a certain weakness of human, nature; that unless we recognize that the ills we suffer, the exploitation and enslavement, the oppression, and misgovernment, are primarily the result of that weakness and that that weakness should be removed amongst us by united national resolve and the efforts of  the Gold Coast people, all our  actions, conciliatory, uncompromising, or direct, will not be attended with immediate or magic success.

             

The great lesson of history is that the Gold Coast has submitted, to foreign misrule and oppression because it had been divided Imperialism is a relation between a strong power and a weak country. Some may advocate that our salvation lies in weakening the strong Imperial Power, but that, fortunately, is not the way of the Convention. The Convention believes that this is our hour of destiny, which must be fully exploited and that the only road successful emancipation of the Gold Coast from colonial subjection and the only road to a powerful liberation of our energies is by strengthening the Gold Coast.

And in the known circumstance, the most effective implement for that strengthening is to unite the people and to mobilize the national resources for the supreme resurgence.

This is the indispensable foundation stone upon which the entire superstructure of the Convention is built. To accept it is to believe in the Convention. And when the Gold Coast people accepted this doctrine that their cultural and economic backwardness, their poverty in the midst of a teasing potential and actual plenty, their political ineffectiveness , were due to certain internal factors which fostered disunity; that isolated acts of a few persons- however brilliant – were powerless against the strongholds of the imperialist, but that victory lay in a united Gold Coast, the death-knell of colonial rule and misrule was sounded in this country .

The Convention, as its Constitution declares, seeks: “ Collaboration and co-operation with political Institutions, movements, or parties in other Gold Coast Territories for a complete union of greater Gold Coast in a Central Government of its people and their Natural Rules.” Accidental.

The Convention, in short, is above Personalities above Class, above Religion, above Tribe, and above territorial divisions of the Gold Coast. Its aims and objects are deliberately made broad to allow the literate and illiterate, the old and the young, the Chief and the Commoner, the farmer and the storekeeper, the lawyer, the doctor, the artisan, the teacher, the Christian and the Moslem, the Colony, Ashanti and the Northern Territories as well as the Tans-Volta   to enroll in this national liberation movement without any qualm of the conscience. Fortunately our achievements and our set-backs, and the separatist events of the last twelve months have emphasized                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Supreme need of the country and the wisdom of our stand.

The Convention, however, does not underestimate the practical difficulties of this great and ambitious venture to unite the people. We are fully aware that the leadership, the organization, and the discipline of a large array of people with different –sometimes opposing interests- will be offset with hardships. But we are deterred because of our one great faith: we have faith in the Gold Coast people. We have faith in their sound 'sense' of political vision. We have faith in their stern invincible resolve to see ·the end of imperialism. We have faith above all, that with the people united with their Chiefs we can remove and overcome mountains in our path to freedom and liberty. We firmly believe that the Gold Coast people properly organized for clear objective, can be trusted to be good party men. A good party man may be defined as one so disciplined in thought and action that in this hour of the puts his party above himself, and his country above his party. We are absolutely confident, that he final struggle for liberation, all the people can trusted be to subordinate their individual ambitions-and interests to the supreme overriding welfare of the 'nation.

As a national movement the United Gold Coast Convention sets out boldly to mobilize and unite the political and moral power of the Gold Coast to bear upon the struggle to liberate Ghana from colonial subjection. Its aim is and shall be:

“To ensure that by all legitimate and constitutional means the control and direction of Government shall within the shortest possible time pass in the hands of the people and their Chiefs.”

It is pledged to democracy. Its constitutional aim is not .so much to change the “color" or “race” of the rulers of this-country as to go much deeper and' change the form of government from one' of an irresponsible autocracy· of Civil Servants acting  as "Masters” to that of a Government of the people's democratically  elected representative responsible' to the people. If in the unflinching pursuance of its objective the: colour or race at the top of government should happen to change it would be an inevitable issuance of the downfall of the trappings of imperialism. The .realistic approach to nationalism in Africa is basically political to ensure good government, with elected responsible men at the top, and to inspire 'that same good government right through the Administration and its services.

The political policy of the Convention is based upon the following principles:

(a)   to win a Constitution' which ensures the effectual representation of the people;

(b) to secure for, the Gold Coast people an instrument of progress which' gives coherence, meaning, and direction to their national desires and aspiration;

To obtain for the Gold Coast people an instrument for parliamentary practice whereby they will exercise effective control over their government

 (d) to develop a Party which formulates and promulgates policy ahead of the time to meet the present and future  consequential national needs;

(e) to-establish a free  society based on, the principles' ,of democratic socialism;

(f) to preserve, develop and. strengthen the great traditions of the "country; .to purify and upraise our customs, to develop our languages for effective national use, and to purge the national life of any foreign or untraditional taints and excrescences which delay or thwart the spiritual growth and power of the people and their Chief to recognition of, and respect for, themselves as an African people with an African destiny to power.

g) to ensure that every person who is willing to contribute to the national wealth, welfare and power shall have a guaranteed minimum of the means for a tolerable civilized standard of living;

h) to ensure that the natural resources of the nation shall be utilized in the interest of all the people:

To ensure that the optimum diffusion of private enterprise and ownership of property shall be developed alongside the maximum attainment of personal liberty within the framework of the ‘welfare state’ which is which is envisaged by the United Gold Coast Convention as the soundest and most practicable political policy for the prosperity of the country and the happiness, the inspiration and the contentment of the people.

ADOPTED BY THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL AT KUMASI ON STURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1949

Editorial

THE LIE

The Danquah –Busia tradition has been desperately trying to turn Ghana’s history on its head so it can reap maximum political benefit.

 The problem is that the harder it tries the more it is exposed for lying about the history of Ghana.

One of the latest claims to collapse in the face of these Danquah-Busiasts is the one which says that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is the inheritor of the United Gold Coast Convention.

As has been published on the front page of this edition, the United Gold Coast Convention was undoubtedly committed to what it called “Democratic Socialism”.

 It did not believe in the dog-eat-dog Society which the NPP’s so-called liberal democratic philosophy points to.

Indeed, if there is any political party which is the true inheritor of the UGCC, it can only be the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) which remained true to the ideals of Socialism.

The Insight will continue to expose the historical lies of the shameless elements in the Danquah Busia tradition.

This is our historic duty.

Message To The Insight

Managing Editor of The Insight Kwesi Pratt Jnr

On the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the authoritative "Insight" newspaper, the leadership and entire membership of the Private Newspaper Publishers Association of Ghana (PRINPAG) wishes to extend its warmest felicitation to the Publisher and Staff.

Barely some few months after the establishement of the then "Weakly Insight" newspaper, the entire membership of our Association entrusted the Presidency of PRINPAG to the Publisher-Kwesi Pratt Jnr. precisely in 1994. His relently advocacy role against the tyraunical and oppressive "Criminal Libel Law" eventually resulted in the victory for media freedom. This achievement did not only emboldened the progressive forces in Print Media Industry and the Journalistic profession but also paved the way for the liberalisation of the airwaves.The entire Ghanaian populace are the beneficiaries today.

PRINPAG wishes to inspire the Publisher and Staff of the Insight to remain consistent in their Journalistic crusade against political corruption so shamefully pervasive in contemporary 21st Century Ghana, We also support your effort and commitment to promote good democratic governance and economic independence.

CONGRATULATIONS !!!

Kenteman Nii Laryea Sowah

Executive Secretary

PRINPAG

US planned Syrian catastrophe since 2007

By Tony Cartalucci

What we are witnessing in Syria today is the direct result of a documented conspiracy, not by a "brutal Syrian regime" "oppressing" its own people, but of a US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia radicalizing, arming, and unleashing a sectarian tidal wave they knew well ahead of time would cause atrocities, genocide, mass displacements and even the geopolitical partitioning of Syria and beyond. The intentional destabilization of the region is meant to weaken Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Iraq - and even Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and others - to accomplish what the depleted, impotent US and Israeli forces could not achieve. Military intervention now seeks to tip the balance of an already teetering region.

NBC News' report, "'The great tragedy of this century': More than 2 million refugees forced out of Syria," stated:

More than 2 million Syrians have poured into neighboring countries as refugees, the United Nations revealed on Tuesday. 

Around 5,000 people per day are fleeing the three-year conflict, which the U.N. says has already claimed over 100,000 lives. 

“Syria has become the great tragedy of this century -- a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history,” said Antَnio Guterres, the U.N.’s high commissioner responsible for refugees. 

But, while the UN and nations across the West feign shock over the growing humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in and around Syria, the goal of a violent sectarian conflict and its predictable, catastrophic results along with calls to literally "bleed" Syria have been the underlying strategy of special interests in the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and their regional partners since at least 2007. 

A Timeline: How the Syrian Conflict Really Unfolded 

Western media networks have ensured that a singular narrative of "pro-democracy" uprisings turning violent in the face of brutal oppression by the Syrian government after the so-called "Arab Spring" is disseminated across the public. In reality, "pro-democracy" protesters served as a tenuous smokescreen behind which armed foreign-backed extremists took to the streets and countrysides of Syria to execute a sectarian bloodbath years in the making. Here is a timeline that illuminates the true cause of Syria's current conflict and the foreign interests, not the Syrian government, responsible for the tens of thousands dead and millions displaced during the conflict. 

1991: Paul Wolfowitz, then Undersecretary of Defense, tells US Army General Wesley Clark that the US has 5-10 years to "clean up those old Soviet client regimes, Syria, Iran, Iraq, before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us." Fora.TV: Wesley Clark at the Commonwealth Club of California, October 3, 2007. 

2001: A classified plot is revealed to US Army General Wesley Clark that the US plans to attack and destroy the governments of 7 nations: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. Fora.TV: Wesley Clark at the Commonwealth Club of California, October 3, 2007. 

2002: US Under Secretary of State John Bolton declares Syria a member of the "Axis of Evil" and warned that "the US would take action." BBC: "US Expands 'Axis of Evil'" May 6, 2002. 

2005: US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy organizes and implements the "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon directly aimed at undermining Syrian-Iranian influence in Lebanon in favor of Western-backed proxies, most notably Saad Hariri's political faction. Counterpunch: "Faking the Case Against Syria," by Trish Schuh November 19-20, 2005. 

2005: Ziad Abdel Nour, an associate of Bush Administration advisers, policy makers, and media including Neo-Conservatives Paula Dobriansky, James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Joseph Farah (World Net Daily), Clifford May, and Daniel Nassif of US State Department-funded Al Hurra and Radio Sawa, admits: "Both the Syrian and Lebanese regimes will be changed- whether they like it or not- whether it’s going to be a military coup or something else… and we are working on it. We know already exactly who’s going to be the replacements. We’re working on it with the Bush administration." Counterpunch: "Faking the Case Against Syria," by Trish Schuh November 19-20, 2005.

2006: Israel attempts, and fails, to destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon after a prolonged aerial bombard that resulted in thousands of civilian deaths. CNN: "UN: Hezbollah and Israel agree on Monday cease-fire," August 13, 2006. 

2007: Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker reveals that US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Hariri in Lebanon as well as the Syrian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood were assembling, arming, training, and heavily funding a sectarian extremists front, many of whom had direct ties to Al Qaeda, to unleash in both Lebanon and Syria. The goal was to create and exploit a sectarian divide between Sunni and Shi'ia Muslims. Hersh interviewed intelligence officers who expressed concerns over the "cataclysmic conflict" that would result, and the need to protect ethnic minorities from sectarian atrocities. The report indicated that extremists would be logistically staged in northern Lebanon where they would be able to cross back and forth into Syria. New Yorker: "The Redirection," by Seymour Hersh, March 5, 2007. 

2008: The US State Department begins training, funding, networking, and equipping "activists" through its "Alliance for Youth Movements" where the future protest leaders of the "Arab Spring," including Egypt's "April 6 Movement" were brought to New York, London, and Mexico, before being trained by US-funded CANVAS in Serbia, and then returning home to begin preparations for 2011. Land Destroyer: "2011 - Year of the Dupe," December 24, 2011. 

009: The Brookings Institution published a report titled, "Which Path to Persia?" which admits that the Bush Administration "evicted" Syria from Lebanon without building up a strong Lebanese government to replace it (p. 34), that Israel struck a "nascent" Syrian nuclear program, and states the importance of neutralizing Syrian influence before any attack on Iran can be carried out (p. 109). The report then goes on to describe in detail the use of listed terrorist organizations against the government of Iran, in particular the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) (p. 126) and Baluch insurgents in Pakistan (p.132). Brookings Institution: "Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran," June 2009. 

2009-2010: In an April 2011 AFP report, Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, admitted that the "US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments." The report went on to admit that the US (emphasis added) "organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there." Posner would add, "They went back and there's a ripple effect." AFP: "US Trains Activists to Evade Security Forces," April 8, 2011. 

2011: Posner's US trained, funded, and equipped activists return to their respective countries across the Arab World to begin their "ripple effect." Protests, vandalism , and arson sweep across Syria and "rooftop snipers" begin attacking both protesters and Syrian security forces, just as Western-backed movements were documented doing in Bangkok, Thailand one year earlier. With a similar gambit already unfolding in Libya, US senators begin threatening Syria with long planned and sought after military intervention. Land Destroyer: "Syria: Intervention Inevitable," April 29, 2011.

2012: With NATO's Libyan intervention resulting in a weak US-backed Tripoli client-regime, perpetual infighting, nationwide genocide, and the succession of Benghazi in the east, the NATO-backed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), listed by the US State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (listed #27) begins mobilizing weapons, cash, and fighters to begin destabilizing Syria. Headed by LIFG's Abdul Hakim Belhaj, this would be the first confirmed presence of Al Qaeda in Syria, flush with NATO weapons and cash. The Washington Post would confirm, just as stated by Hersh in 2007, that the US and Saudi Arabia were arming the sectarian extremists, now labeled the "Free Syrian Army." The Post also admits that the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, as stated in Hersh's 2007 report, was also involved in arming and backing extremist fighters. Land Destroyer: "US Officially Arming Extremists in Syria," May 16, 2012. 

2012: The US policy think-tank Brookings Institution in its Middle East Memo #21 "Assessing Options for Regime Change (.pdf)," admits that it does not seek any negotiated ceasefire under the UN's "Kofi Annan peace plan" that leaves Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power and would rather arm militants, even with the knowledge they will never succeed, to "bleed" the government, "keeping a regional adversary weak, while avoiding the costs of direct intervention." This reveals that US policy does not view US interference in Syria as a moral imperative predicated on defending human rights, but rather using this false predication to couch aspirations of regional hegemony. Land Destroyer: "US Brookings Wants to "Bleed" Syria to Death," May 28, 2012. 

And, just this year, it was revealed that despite the West's feigned military and political paralysis regarding the Syrian conflict, the US and Great Britain have been covertly funding and arming sectarian extremists to the tune of billions of dollars and arming them with literally thousands of tons of weaponry. Despite claims of "carefully vetting" "moderate" militant factions, the prominence of Al Qaeda-linked extremist groups indicates that the majority of Western support, laundered through Qatar and Saudi Arabia, is being purposefully put into the hands of the very sectarian extremists identified in Seymour Hersh's 2007 article, "The Redirection." 

US Created and is Now Using Syrian Catastrophe to Justify Intervention 

The non-debate taking place now to justify US military intervention in a conflict they themselves started and have intentionally perpetuated, is whether chemical weapons were used in Damascus on August 21, 2013 - not even "who" deployed them. The weakness of the US' argument has seen an unprecedented backlash across both the world's populations and the global diplomatic community. And despite only 9% of the American public supporting a military intervention in Syria, Congress appears poised to not only green-light "limited strikes," but may approve of a wider military escalation. 

In Seymour Hersh's 2007 New Yorker article, "The Redirection," Robert Baer, a former CIA agent in Lebanon, warned of the sectarian bloodbath the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia were planning to unleash. He stated: 

“we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites" 

Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, also featured in Hersh's report, would in turn also warn of an imminent and spreading sectarian war purposefully stoked by the West: 

Nasrallah said he believed that President Bush’s goal was “the drawing of a new map for the region. They want the partition of Iraq. Iraq is not on the edge of a civil war-there is a civil war. There is ethnic and sectarian cleansing. The daily killing and displacement which is taking place in Iraq aims at achieving three Iraqi parts, which will be sectarian and ethnically pure as a prelude to the partition of Iraq. Within one or two years at the most, there will be total Sunni areas, total Shiite areas, and total Kurdish areas. Even in Baghdad, there is a fear that it might be divided into two areas, one Sunni and one Shiite.” 

He went on, “I can say that President Bush is lying when he says he does not want Iraq to be partitioned. All the facts occurring now on the ground make you swear he is dragging Iraq to partition. And a day will come when he will say, ‘I cannot do anything, since the Iraqis want the partition of their country and I honor the wishes of the people of Iraq.’ ” 

Nasrallah said he believed that America also wanted to bring about the partition of Lebanon and of Syria. In Syria, he said, the result would be to push the country “into chaos and internal battles like in Iraq.” In Lebanon, “There will be a Sunni state, an Alawi state, a Christian state, and a Druze state.” But, he said, “I do not know if there will be a Shiite state.” 

It would be difficult for anyone to look across the scarred landscape of today's Syria and not see that this horrific conspiracy was realized in full. The Western media is now acquainting the public with the possibility of a partitioned Syria, echoing the warnings of Nasrallah years ago. The goals of a US military strike would be to "degrade" the capabilities of the Syrian government, while bolstering the terrorist legions still operating within and along Syria's borders. 

What we are witnessing in Syria today is the direct result of a documented conspiracy, not by a "brutal Syrian regime" "oppressing" its own people, but of a US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia radicalizing, arming, and unleashing a sectarian tidal wave they knew well ahead of time would cause atrocities, genocide, mass displacements and even the geopolitical partitioning of Syria and beyond. The intentional destabilization of the region is meant to weaken Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Iraq - and even Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and others - to accomplish what the depleted, impotent US and Israeli forces could not achieve. Military intervention now seeks to tip the balance of an already teetering region. 

The attacks on Syria are not humanitarian by any measure. They are simply the latest stage of a long-running plan to divide and destroy the region, leaving the West the sole regional hegemonic power.