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PP RUEHMA RUEHPA
DE RUEHAR #1525/01 3380800
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 030800Z DEC 08
FM AMEMBASSY ACCRA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 7330
INFO RUEHZK/ECOWAS COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RHMFISS/CDR USAFRICOM STUTTGART GE PRIORITY

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 ACCRA 001525 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR AF/W 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: GH KDEM PGOV PHUM PINS PREL
SUBJECT: GHANA ELECTIONS: WHAT MAKES PAPA RUN? 
 
SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED 
 
¶1.  (SBU) SUMMARY.  Papa Kwesi Nduom, presidential candidate 
for the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), has managed to offend 
most of the party's organizational leaders, and is running 
his campaign with very little support from the rank and file. 
 According to Ivor Greenstreet, CPP's general secretary, 
Nduom is running a one-man show with the aim of gaining media 
attention for himself more than the party, and he is ignoring 
the party's campaign workers at the regional and constituency 
levels.  He does not help to campaign for the party's 
parliamentary candidates, and they in return are leaking 
information to the media that is harming his campaign. 
Greenstreet made little effort to hide his apathy for his 
flagbearer's campaign, or his indifference to Nduom's 
prospects.  END SUMMARY 
 
¶2. (U) On November 26, Poloff met with CPP General Secretary 
Ivor Greenstreet to discuss the party's campaign and 
prospects. Greenstreet was elected Secretary General of the 
CPP at the same party conference in which Papa (Paa) Kwesi 
Nduom was elected as the party's presidential candidate. 
Greenstreet became involved in CPP politics in the 1990s. 
His father-in-law was Jerry Rawlings' first vice president 
(1992-96) in a coalition government, and Greenstreet ran 
twice under the CPP banner in Accra for a parliamentary seat. 
 His wife was killed in a car accident in 1998, and 
Greenstreet (who was at the wheel) was paralyzed and is now 
wheel-chair bound. 
 
¶3. (SBU)  Poloff began the conversation by asking how Nduom 
managed to become the party's flagbearer when most people had 
assumed that the CPP's current patriarch, Agyeman Badu Akosa, 
would get the party nod.  Greenstreet initially talked about 
Nduom's well-organized strategy at the party convention, but 
soon made it clear that by organization he meant that Nduom 
had bought the nomination with a methodical plan for paying 
delegates for their votes.  Since gaining the nomination, 
however, Nduom has steadily alienated the party's core 
members by ignoring or sidelining elected party officers and 
setting up parallel structures using only family members and 
a few trusted advisors.  Nduom's son has begun running the 
campaign in Central Region, without the knowledge or consent 
of the national organizer or local representatives. 
 
¶4.  (SBU)  Greenstreet said that Nduom's campaign is entirely 
self-financed, and that money goes only to Nduom and his 
chief campaign strategist, David Ampofo, who receives about 
$5,000 a month to keep Nduom's name and image front and 
center in the media.  Although Nduom can't win, he hopes to 
establish long-term viability for himself through media 
recognition.  What has angered party members is that Nduom 
doesn't care about the party, and as a consequence, the party 
has been unable to organize a single fund-raiser to support 
parliamentary candidates, whom Nduom has left to their own 
devices.  When asked what Nduom hopes to accomplish with his 
third-party run at the presidency, Greenstreet pointed to 
Nduom's unbridled ambition and his lack of any standing with 
either major party.  Despite the fact that he headed up three 
ministries in the Kufuor government, he could not overcome 
his role as an outsider in the NPP, and could never have 
hoped to wrest the nomination from loyal party members who 
had been waiting patiently for decades.  Thus the CPP was his 
only possible vehicle to promote himself, even though he does 
not really support the CPP's left of center political 
philosophy.  When asked about his debate performance, which 
appeared to promote CPP's socialist agenda, Greenstreet said 
that it was "just talk.  He doesn't believe a word of it, but 
he has to adhere to the party platform."  Nduom's real goal, 
according to Greenstreet, is to imprint his name and image in 
Ghana's public consciousness, planting the seed for a 
political future.  He also hopes that if he can gain enough 
votes to play a spoiler role, he may have some influence with 
the winning party.  (NOTE: Nduom has no chance of winning the 
election, and by most accounts, he will likely garner no more 
than five per cent of the vote.  In the event, however, that 
neither of the two major parties achieves a first-round 
majority, Nduom could be influential, but only if he can 
carry his voters to another party.  END NOTE). 
 
¶5.  (SBU)  As the campaign has progressed, the rift in the 
CPP has broken out into the open, and Greenstreet maintains 
that Nduom is now having to watch his back to avoid publicity 
about party disunity.  The first crack was exposed two months 
ago, when Nduom tried to replace Freddy Blay (a popular CPP 
MP from Western Region who made no secret of his lack of 
enthusiasm for Nduom) with his own hand-picked candidate. 
Blay took the party to court, and won a landmark decision 
that determined that party candidates are chosen at the 
constituency level, and not the national level.  Nduom 
 
ACCRA 00001525  002 OF 002 
 
 
threatened to appeal, but later backed down and tried to 
downplay the dispute with Blay.  (NOTE: Because of his 
antipathy toward Nduom, Blay is openly campaigning for the 
NPP presidential candidate, an unpopular position that may 
cost him his seat.  It is possible that the CPP, which 
currently holds three seats in Parliament, may be totally 
shut out this year.  Samia Nkrumah, daughter of Ghana's 
founding father, is running on the CPP ticket in the Western 
Region, but entered the campaign very late and is a long shot 
to defeat a fairly strong NDC candidate in her consituency. 
END NOTE) 
 
¶6.  (SBU)  Last week, another CPP scandal hit the media as 
Kwabena Bomfeh, the party's national youth organizer, went 
public with a letter he sent to party chairman Ladi Nylander, 
accusing Nduom of having made secret bargains for himself 
with the two major parties.  He said that Nduom was lobbying 
with the NPP for the position of Ministry of Finance and the 
right to name two deputy ministers, and with the NDC for the 
Ministry of Local Government and a "ceasefire" on a Special 
Fraud Office (SFO) investigation into alleged income tax 
evasion as a result of Nduom's having falsely claimed U.S. 
citizenship after he returned to Ghana. (NOTE: Nduom lived in 
the United States from 1973-1991.  He holds a B.A. in 
Economics, an M.S. in Management and a Ph.D. in Service 
Delivery Systems, all from the University of Wisconsin. He 
worked for Deloitte Touche during most of the 1980s, and came 
to Ghana in 1991 as a managing partner and Chairman of 
Deloitte's Africa office.  END NOTE)  When questioned about 
Bomfeh's accusation, Greenstreet admitted that the charges 
were valid, and said that he had in fact seen the letter 
Nduom had written to President Kufuor proposing the deal. 
 
¶7.  (SBU)  Nduom's lack of organization and poor planning, 
Greenstreet said, have left the party in disarray just as the 
elections are coming down to the wire.  He is way out ahead 
of the party apparatus, fending for himself, and at the same 
time, leaving CPP's parliamentary candidates on their own to 
fight for their survival.  He has played the media 
brilliantly, and gained much momentum after a good showing in 
the first presidential debate, but his campaign is completely 
devoid of any grassroots structure.  "We are non-existent on 
the ground," Greenstreet said, "and without constituency and 
regional support, you can't translate media hype into votes." 
 Even worse, he added, is that discontent among party 
stalwarts over lack of resources has created a backlash. 
After an Nduom rally, he said, party members are more 
disheartened and demotivated than before the tour, because 
they feel they have been left out. 
 
¶8.  (SBU)  COMMENT:  Poloff went into this meeting expecting 
the CPP general secretary to hew to the party line, hoping 
only that he would not insult our intelligence by insisting 
that Nduom could actually win the election (as the candidate 
himself has been saying).  Instead, we were treated to a 
totally candid assessment of a party's implosion from a high 
ranking insider who obviously has been off the party 
reservation for some time.  Although Greenstreet restrained 
himself from open criticism of Nduom, he made it perfectly 
clear that he had less than zero respect for his candidate. 
His demeanor was more disheartened and disappointed than 
bitter, like someone so fed up with the course of events and 
feeling so powerless to change them that he had simply 
decided to mentally check out.  Greenstreet did not say what 
the future held for him or his party (his salary, like all 
four general secretaries of parties with seats in Parliament, 
is paid for by a grant from the Institute for Economic 
Affairs).  He did surmise, however, that should Nduom not 
rise to the level of a spoiler in the election, he would be 
completely out in the woods politically with nowhere to turn. 
TEITELBAUM