<<Print>>

The immediate-past Chairperson of the Convention People's Party (CPP), Ms Samia Nkrumah, says the party will remain focused and strong despite the exit of its Presidential Candidate in the 2012 Election, Dr Abu Sakara Foster.

Speaking on Accra-based Joy FM on Wednesday, Ms Nkrumah said although the party had not received any letter from Dr Sakara indicating that the latter was leaving to contest as an independent candidate in the 2016 Election, such a move would not come as a surprise.

Ms Nkrumah, who has picked forms to contest the Presidential Primaries of the CPP, said rumours emerged after the party’s congress in Sunyani last year that Dr Sakara might be leaving.

Dismissing the former CPP Presidential Candidate’s exit as something of limited significance, she said: “People are free to join and to leave parties.”

Ms Nkrumah rejected claims by a section of the public to the effect that the exit of people like Dr Sakara and his predecessor, Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, from the CPP was because they found it difficult working with her.

“I’m not chairperson and leader of the party as we speak now,” she said, adding that it was curious that the exit of the aforementioned individuals had occurred in crucial election years.

“Who gains from their actions? it’s not the party. It’s the opponents of the party,” she said, attributing the exits to “political maneuvering and manipulation from outside”.

Ms Nkrumah went on to add that the CPP would not be distracted, as 2016 was a year the party intended to get its message across to the Ghanaian people.

Stressing that the two-party system dominated by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) had been detrimental to Ghana’s socio-economic development, she said the CPP would be a “new and alternative government” that would run the country and industrialise it.

Ms Nkrumah said it was imperative the CPP established in Ghana what her father and first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, “was stopped from doing”.