Veteran Ghanaian journalist and Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr, has launched a scathing critique of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), arguing that the party’s current internal challenges are rooted in a fundamental transformation that began more than a decade ago and was driven by intolerance and the use of violence to settle internal disputes.
Speaking on Alhaji and Alhaji on Pan African Television, Pratt questioned the very identity of the party as it exists today.
“What is the New Patriotic Party that we have today?” he asked, before asserting that, “the construction of today’s New Patriotic Party actually began somewhere in 2008, or maybe a little earlier.”
According to Pratt, the NPP that emerged from that period is markedly different from the party founded in 1992, both in character and internal culture.
“That was when the construction of today’s New Patriotic Party, which is different from the construction of the 1992 New Patriotic Party, began,” he said.
Pratt argued that the turning point for the party was the emergence of vigilante groups, which he said coincided with a decline in mature political discourse within the party.
“Around this time, there was a shift from mature national political debate and a degeneration into the employment of violence as a means of settling internal disputes within the New Patriotic Party,” he stated.
He referenced the formation of groups such as the Bolgatanga Bulldogs, noting that while they were publicly presented as a response to external threats, their actual role was different.
“The impression was given that it was to counter NDC violence. That was the impression that was given,” Pratt said, before adding pointedly, “but go back into that history, at no time did any of these violent groups attack NDC members. At no time.”
Instead, he insisted, the targets were members of the party itself.
“All those who became victims of these vigilante groups were NPP persons who disagreed with the party’s choice of presidential candidature,” he said.
Pratt described this phase as the beginning of what he called an “agree or vanish” culture within the party, where dissent was no longer tolerated. He cited the removal or marginalisation of several prominent figures as evidence of this trend.
“Look at the numbers of people who were chucked out; Paul Afoko, Nyaho-Tamakloe, Sammy Crabbe, and so many others,” Pratt noted, adding that even those who were not formally expelled were “so intimidated that they themselves withdrew from frontline party activities.”
According to him, this culture fundamentally altered the party’s internal democracy and sowed the seeds of the divisions it is grappling with today.
“That marked the beginning of this New Patriotic Party, which Professor Frimpong-Boateng describe as fake, and that is the origin of the problems that this party faces today,” he argued.
In a sharp warning about the party’s current trajectory, Pratt said he was convinced that forces within the NPP are now attempting to reduce the party to a narrow personality-driven organisation.
“I am left in no doubt—absolutely no doubt, that currently there is an attempt to reduce the New Patriotic Party to a Bawumia fan club,” he declared.
He added that, in his view, “the evidence is there,” suggesting that the party risks losing its broad ideological base and internal pluralism.
Pratt’s comments form part of wider public commentary on the historical development and internal dynamics of the New Patriotic Party.
