Politics in Swedru

Throughout its history the Convention People's Party was characterised in a most glaring way by a steady and continuous accretion of power. It succeeded in dominating first the political and then the social and economic scene by its control of’integral organisations’, and it purported to give general direction not only to workers, farmers, market women and petty traders but, in a more general sense, to the ‘youth’. Overall, it was perhaps what may justly be termed a ‘party corporation’. And the legalising of a one-party state in 1964 was simply the granting of de jure recognition to a state of affairs that had existed de facto since 1958. ¹ In Swedru all councillors had, therefore, to be card carrying members of the C.P.P. The spirited opposition headed by Nana Kum and Kojo Essilfie—whom we shall meet later—had been eliminated, and only C.P.P. members could contest local elections. In many instances, there were no genuine and free elections: the nominees of the local C.P.P. executive were always returned unopposed. Council activities and decisions were then controlled by a party-appointed District Commissioner (and his close friends) whose word, as the most senior party man at the local level, was almost always law. In other matters, the party relied for its organisation and finance on a relatively small number of men whose contribution to the party were seen not as personal sacrifices in the national interest, but as investments of time and money in the party corporation. The C.P.P. was expected in time to yield to these party member ‘investors’ or ‘shareholders’ not only substantial ‘dividends’ but assured positions on the political ‘board of directors’, as Regional and District Commissioners and Chairmen of councils. The President of the state, who was also the Life Chairman of the C.P.P., became (or was seen as) the trustee for the corporate property of the state as a whole and for all the economic resources vested in it. State property became party property. At the very least, the party had almost unlimited power to allocate the resources as it thought fit, and this authority to distribute resources was the primary basis of the party's supreme power.