Shut Up or face expulsion -NPP to Wayo

The Ayawaso East Constituency of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has asked Kofi Wayo to "shut up" or face "expulsion" from the party. As The Accra Daily Mail predicted earlier this week, things are coming to a head between Mr. Wayo and his party. His radio campaign against the party that put him up as a parliamentary candidate in Election 2000 has all but damaged his standing in the party and one way or the other, something has to give. For members of the Ayawaso East Constituency, (the constituency he represented in his failed bid to get into parliament) to step forward and call him to order means that the break is now almost complete.

At a press conference in Accra yesterday, spokesmen from the constituency expressed grave concern and disappointment at the "disloyalty of a common party member". The group said his behaviour of "hopping from one radio station to other," attacking the party, its policies and some officials is "a violation of article 478 of our code of conduct."

Mr. Felix Amoah, the Constituency Spokesperson said "his current strident attacks on the government therefore, are clearly vain attempts to find a scapegoat for his own failings".

As was reported in The Accra Daily Mail yesterday, some party loyalists do not know what to do with Mr. Wayo because he is a "Santrofe Anoma". The full test of the Ayawaso East Constituency speaks for itself and is presented in full below.

"We have invited you here as the Ayawaso East constituency of the NPP to wave a red flag to the country, a caution statement based on the experience we as a constituency have had with our parliamentary candidate for the 2000 elections, Mr. Charles Eric Paterson Simmons a.k.a. Kofi Wayo.

In 2000, when we canvassed support for Kofi Wayo to become our parliamentary candidate, it was done in the expectation that the humane and wealthy Kofi Wayo that he so loquaciously presented himself would bring to bear on our campaign and thereby ensure victory. A deep sense of compassion and fellow feeling, sound management and, of course, good money. How wrong our calculations proved to be!

To add insult to injury, Kofi Wayo, after the failure, has turned round, not only to constantly criticize the government that he claims to be part of, but has began moves to lure some of our youth into a scheme, which he claims, will launch a movement to make him presidential candidate for the 2004 election, either on the NPP ticket or as an independent candidate.

Indeed, the NPP lost the parliamentary seat mainly as a result of the fact that the great expectations we had in Kofi Wayo's candidature tuned sour due to his conduct and style.

For instance, the humanism we expected from him rather manifested in his contempt for the people of Nima and environs as he constantly insulted them as dirty and uncouth. Our opponents naturally jumped on this and used it effectively as a weapon against our campaign.

If there is any area where Kofi Wayo's style has and is hurting the NPP, not only in the constituency, but also up to the national level, it is the wild promises he made on party platforms without reference to the party's manifesto during the campaign.

It was he, for instance, who constantly promised to create 750,000 jobs within one year of an NPP government. For the people of Nima and environs, he promised to change all the public pit latrines into water closets within one year.

His current strident attacks on the government therefore, are clearly vain attempts to find a scapegoat for his own failings, loose and empty talk and inability to deliver what he promised the people during the campaign.

As the parliamentary candidate and therefore the manager of the 2000 parliamentary campaign for the constituency, Kofi Wayo was an abysmal failure.

Two years after his election as parliamentary candidate, he is yet to meet polling agents of the constituency to either motivate them or thank them for their invaluable services during the election. Instead of finding time to sit down and strategise for victory in the 2000 election, his main delight was in hopping from one radio station and party rally to the other to make cheap promises.

The area of real disappointment with him was to do with money. The Rolls-Royce owning-cigar-chain smoking Kofi Wayo that we until recently knew, was supposed to be the modern day Ackah Blay Miezah type money man who liberally gave, especially for the good cause that we were pursing. Unlike Blay Miezah, however, Wayo was all empty talk and no money.

Roll-Royce owning Wayo ironically, was one of the very few parliamentary candidates in the NPP who could not provide their constituencies with even one campaign van, even though he kept on promising to provide 6 cars for use. Eventually, we had to rely on vehicles provided by Hon. George Amoo, and taxis for our campaign.

Up till now the constituency does not have an office since the one used for the campaign is in the name of the Kofi Wayo fan club and he has refused to hand it over to the party. Even 'T' shirts with his photographs embossed on then were sold to party activists.

As we speak to you, he is yet to pay the hardworking young men and women who helped police the polls on election day. That aside, he owes the constituency chairman and other executive members over ?3 million in money he either personally collected for the campaign or authorized to be used for the campaign.

Ever the showman, Wayo's style, even as he neglected the constituency, was to get into a crowd of people and mesmerize them by ordering hawkers of groundnuts, "bofrot" or "waakye" to give their wares free of charge to the people. More often than not, the cost of these wares turned out to be between only ?5000 and ?30,000.

In other instances, he played on the ignorance of people by distributing dollar bills only for such people to rush to the forex bureau to be told they were mere $1 bills!

Clearly Kofi Wayo has conned us in the constituency and we owe it a duty to the nation to warn the people of this country to avoid being so conned by this great glib talking Ghanaian who seems to hold the intelligence of the Ghanaian in so much contempt that even our great SecretaryGeneral of the UN, Mr. Kofi Annan has not been spared the insults and ridicule that have become his stock in trade.

It is amazing and ironic that instead of accepting responsibility for his failings and assisting the government he claims to be part of to fulfil the numerous campaign promises that he himself unilaterally made, he is making the government the scapegoat of all his failings.

Much as we acknowledge and appreciate the democratic structure of the NPP and its internal democracy, which permits anybody to criticize any other body, we believe that Kofi Wayo is by his utterances, transcending the bounds of average good behaviour and party discipline.

Indeed, his pronouncements, especially on his radio programmes on Vibe FM, are clearly "below the belt", as he is not only undermining the NPP, but subverting the government as he is descending deeper and deeper into the gutter with his scathing attacks on His Excellency the President and other personalities in the government, by whipping up tribal settlements.

We are very reliably informed that Kofi Wayo at various times, lobbied to be made Minister of Energy, Managing Director of Tema Oil Refinery and Minister of Youth and Sports as the replacement for Mallam Issa. We hope that his unwarranted and misguided attacks on the government are not the result of bitterness stemming from the refusal to grant him any of these requests.

Whatever it is, the time has come to say, enough is enough, and our advise to Kofi Wayo is to either put up with the party he calls his own by shutting up or to get out of the party and engage in his useless, selfish and unproductive noise-making campaign.

Failing that, we appeal to the National Executive of the NPP to invoke the rules on party discipline and kick out Kofi Wayo so we can have decency in our great party once again."