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The stakes were high and the candidates sufficiently primed to vie for the various positions in last Saturday�s New Patriotic Party (NPP) national delegates� conference. In all such contests, it is standard that only one person emerges victorious for each of the positions and last Saturday did not prove different. A day or so after the electoral duel, it is natural to interrogate the exercise and indeed, there would be much more analysis with equally varying shades of opinions. Why not? Whichever way one looks at the conference, the conclusion that can be drawn is that the NPP as a party has made an emphatic statement that even in the face of a so-called internal wrangling, a feature common to both leading political groupings in the country, it has been able to put its act together and come out unscathed, in fact with flying colours. Not only was the party able to come out of such a mammoth internal election unscathed, it tried out a critical enlarged delegates� register to, as it were, allow many more have a say in the choice of party leaders at various levels. There were as many supporters of the enlarged register as opponents. While those who supported the then untried formula argued on the fact that it would be better for many more persons to take the critical decision of who leads the party at what level, those opposed thought being unchartered waters, it was too risky and costly applying it at all. There was just too much noise about the untried vis-�-vis the two factions� hullabaloo that for some, it was just another political nuisance on the political turf. The cacophony appeared to be ready to lead the political grouping to the precipice as it inched towards the conference day, according to some doctrinaire analysts. As fate would have it, the party has come out of the national delegates� conference with no bones broken and perhaps stronger than before the political activity. Whatever happens in any of the registered political parties in the country must be a source of concern to every Ghanaian, because as bedrocks of democracy from which future leaders emerge, these entities can be regarded as public bodies of sorts. After all, they are governed by the Political Parties Law prevailing in the country and being considered for public funding. These are cogent reasons to get us worried when there are brawls within the political parties, especially the two dominant ones. Much as there are still pockets of misconduct on the part of some party elements, Ghana as a whole is gradually moving away from its sordid past. It is interesting to note that in their solidarity messages, the CPP and the PNC acknowledged the uniqueness of the NPP congress in terms of the number of enfranchised persons, unprecedented in the political history of the country. It was not surprising therefore that many were just too eager and impatient to see the outcome of the hotly-contested political duel. No wonder the political parties in their solidarity messages could only pray for a successful end to the internal elections. Success crowned the efforts, and for us, it was gratifying because it points at a growing democracy in which the electorates, and in this case the delegates, are more discerning than in years gone by. They can no longer be taken for a ride, thanks to a vibrant media and a freedom of expression culture nurtured by the previous political administration of the NPP. The country would not have forgiven the NPP had things gone haywire. It is our prayer that the virtues of civility and orderliness, even when we do not agree with each other both within and outside our political parties, as exhibited by the NPP in their conference, would remain the hallmark of politics in Ghana now and forever.