NPP Elder: Apraku is the ‘Judas Iscariot’ in the NPP

A founder-member of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Kwame Amoako-Tuffuor, has described Dr Kofi Konadu Apraku as a traitor in the party.

The NPP elder told XYZ Breakfast Show Host Moro Awudu Monday that he found it puzzling that the 2008 campaign manager of the party’s two-time presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, will now be running down his former boss just to propel his own selfish presidential ambitions.

“…Anybody who sounds like he’s betraying a boss without any real good reason, but just destructive, sounds like Judas Iscariot to Jesus”, he insisted.

Dr Apraku told NPP supporters at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) over the weekend, at the inauguration of TESCONA, an NPP group made of past graduates of tertiary schools, that: “…In an election year for our presidential candidate, let me say we should select the best possible person for our party. The person who will embody the aspirations, the values of the rest of the population. Somebody Ghanaians can see through and say ‘I want my son to be this person’”.

The former Offinso North MP said it is important the party allows free internal contests as far as the election of executives and a flagbearer for the 2016 elections is concerned.

“Let everybody be free to compete in this election without regard to ‘I belong to this, I belong to that’”.

According to him, “everybody should be selected on the basis of their competence, their loyalty, effectiveness and dedication to work” adding that: “In the final analysis, it’s not who you belong to that matters, it’s what you can achieve for this party”.

Dr Amoako-Tuffuor however said Dr Apraku’s behaviour smacks of back stabbing.

“I don’t want to get on the hit yet, but if somebody wants to make my day, I’ll come through. This kind of business of running somebody down and then saying ‘I love the party’ and tomorrow that somebody who has been run-down becomes the leader and then we struggle to do a different PR and all that, that shows that there are some people who are not really good serious party members”.

He has therefore suggested a few changes be made within the structures of the party to ensure more discipline as far as the flagbearership contest is concerned.

“In future, I’m proposing, because of these experiences, that we look at the constitution of the council of elders, re-constitute it, give it more powers to make a decision that ‘this time we want only two candidates to contest or one candidate or five’ and they are entrusted with the ownership of the party…”

He has also questioned the locus of Dr Apraku within the NPP, for him to be urging that the party’s two-time presidential candidate be changed.

“…Who is Dr Konadu Apraku to talk for Ghanaians who have decided they want Akufo-Addo the third time?”