Nation mourns Dan Lartey (Front Page)

A CROSS-SECTION of Ghanaians yesterday turned out at the ‘Citadel House’, the residence of the Founder and Leader of the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), Mr Dan Lartey, to mourn the passing away of the elder politician.
The businessman and politician passed away in his sleep at the home he had named ‘Citadel House’ at the age of 83, leaving behind an 87-year-old wife and eight children, comprising five men and three women.
Although some people were wailing at the time the Daily Graphic visited the residence at Kaneshie First Light, the mood of the immediate family was, however, not that of sorrow.
In an interview, the deceased’s eldest son, Mr Henry Lartey, said in spite of some adversities, his late father lived a fulfilled life, for which reason the family would remain grateful to God and celebrate his life.
A former publisher and labour unionist, Dan Lartey's name became a household one following his 2004 mantra of “domestication”, the political philosophy of growing Ghana from Ghana, rather than depending on foreign aid and investments.
His political career started in 1969 when he contested the Gomoa East Constituency seat on the ticket of the National Alliance of Liberals (NAL) in the parliamentary election of that year.
In 1972, he was appointed a special adviser to General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong’s National Redemption Council (NRC) government.
In 1978, he represented Gomoa-Ewutu-Effutu at the Constituent Assembly in the writing of the Third Republican Constitution.
Mr Lartey was a founder member of the People's National Party (PNP) in 1979 and an aspiring presidential candidate of the National Independence Party (NIP) in 1992 and lost to Mr Kwabena Darko.
With signs of old age and its attendant ill health, Mr Dan Lartey returned to Ghana on November 29, 2009 after a six-month visit to the United States of America (USA), where he received medical treatment, but he passed away last Monday, December 28.
Christened Daniel Augustus Lartey, the 2000 and 2004 presidential candidate of the GCPP was born on August 1, 1926 at Winneba in the Central Region.
After his elementary education in Ghana, he proceeded to the UK, where he obtained a diploma at the London Chamber of Commerce and Sloan's Shorthand Certificate of Proficiency. He also obtained a diploma in commerce and industry from the London School of Economics in 1956.
From 1944 to 1958, Mr Lartey worked with the then United Africa Company (UAC), where he rose to senior management status and was posted to its headquarters at the Unilever House in London.
Mr Lartey established a number of businesses, including Lartey & Lartey Books and Stationery, which later became the nucleus of Ghana Book Supply, Citadel Printing Press and the Federal Stores of Nigeria.
According to his son, Henry, the late Mr Lartey established five newspapers — the Citadel Daily, African World, Citadel Sports, The Guardian and The Guardian Sports.
He was said to have suffered under the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), during which his printing press was closed for about a year.
When he realised that he could not revamp the press house, the late Mr Lartey leased a greater part of the structure to individual enterprises and kept some of the rooms as his political party office.
Later in life, he became the Odikro of Gomoa Lome in the Central Region but had to vacate the stool when he decided to engage in active political party activities in 1992.
When the ban on party politics was lifted in Ghana, private newspapers such as The Vanguard, edited by Mr Osbert Lartey, The Experience, with Mr Stanley Solomon as the Editor, and The Christian Chronicle, which was edited by the late Mr George Naykene, were all housed within the Citadel House.
Some individuals who often visited Mr Dan Lartey’s Citadel House in the early 1990s were Mr Kwesi Pratt Jnr, Mr Joe Baidoo Ansah, Mr Akoto Ampaw, Dr Sekou Nkrumah, Mr Ali Masmadi Jehu-Appiah, among others.
Mr Lartey, a staunch vestige of Kwame Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party (CPP) and Nkrumahist adherent, ran for national president on the ticket of the GCPP on two occasions since breaking away to form the party as a splinter of the CPP.
After the 2000 and 2004 elections, he was only stopped from having a third bite at the 2008 presidential race when the Electoral Commission (EC) disqualified him for submitting his nomination papers late.
He had just managed to beat an October 17, 2008 deadline for the exercise and paid the stipulated GH¢5,000 nomination fee, only to be told of errors in his documents. The documents and the money were returned to him, but that was too late to beat the deadline.
Although he had been on his sick bed, Mr Lartey managed to grant an interview to the Daily Graphic which was published on December 19 and 22, this year.
In the first story, he asked Ghanaians to be adequately educated on the principles and functions of electronic voting if the country decided to use it for the 2012 elections.
Mr Lartey, who had returned from a trip abroad, said much as his party was in support of such an innovation, there was the need for care to be taken to prevent any individual or group of persons from taking undue advantage of the move.
In the other story, the late Mr Lartey urged the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) to sit up and take up its constitutional duties effectively in order not to allow non-governmental institutions to take the shine out of it.