Vice President John Mahama has called on members of the Tertiary Education Institutions Network (TEIN) of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), to join hands with the executives of the party to work assiduously to maintain the discipline in the party.
The Vice president bemoaned the recent turbulence in the NDC and called on the youth in the party to forge a united front so as to overcome the challenges bedeviling the ruling party and expressed the hope that TEIN would be the voice of reason in the party like it used to be in the past, as it gets set for the 2012 elections.
Mr. Mahama was addressing members of the TEIN at the national conference of the group at the University of Cape Coast in the Central region.
“There was no way the opposition NPP could stand a united NDC and underlined the importance of unity among the rank and file of the party to ensure victory in 2012.”
Vice-President Mahama said the successes of the PNDC/NDC under the Rawlings administration were due to the unity and discipline that was prevailing at that time and called on the party faithful to accord President John Evans Atta Mills the needed support to enable him to roll out good policies and programmes for the country.
"We must find a way of ensuring that the party survives and exists despite our differences and disagreements. We have come a long way from PNDC to NDC I and NDC II, what made us successful was that we listened to one commander."
“If we do not maintain that tradition and we listen to two commanders, we are an army that is bound to fail. The President should be the one to issue the commands for us to follow, there should not be any other commands to undermine his authority," he stressed.
The Vice-President said he did not believe that the problems bedeviling the party had to do with communication but rather the attacks on the party by its own members.
He said the activities of some party activists in recent times might be genuine but some were also incited and stressed the need for the youth to be given an orientation on the party's principles and values to understand what the party stood for in respect to discipline.
He said the Mills administration had made strides by achieving single digit inflation in less than two years and attained 80 per cent coverage in the school uniform programme, as well as rural electrification and agriculture.
Mr. Ludwig Hlodze, National Youth Organiser of the NDC said the youth wing was not excluded in the difficult challenges the party was experiencing and said the conference would look at how best the youth could contribute to the better Ghana agenda.
He, however, stated that even as the party searched for more members it would not compromise in applying discipline, saying, the party would not allow its hard work to be destroyed by a disgruntled few.
The three-day conference themed, "Better Ghana agenda: Rejuvenating our structures with discipline and voluntarism for victory in 2012," is being attended by party stalwarts including Dr. Kwabena Adjei, National Chairman of the NDC, E.T. Mensah, Minister of Employment and Social Welfare, Mr. P.V. Obeng, Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission, Dr. Valery Sawyer, a Deputy Chief of Staff, as well as regional youth organisers of the party.
Story: Office of the Vice President
26/11/10
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