NPP Congress In Danger

Four of the five persons vying for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential slot say the electoral register that will be used for the party's primaries on August 7, 2010 is not credible and so they will no longer co-operate with the party's electoral committee.

DAILY GUIDE has also received reports that some party members are planning to seek a court injunction restraining the proposed congress from taking place as originally scheduled due to “unaddressed grievances in the road map to congress”.

Party Chairman Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, in response, told DAILY GUIDE yesterday that the NPP had an “absolute belief in the credibility of the voters' register” and that the fine details of how the register was compiled had been well explained to all aspirants who understood the process. He was therefore surprised at the latest turn of events.

The four complaining presidential hopefuls are Prof. Kwabena Frempong-Boateng, Isaac Osei, John Kodua and Alan Kyerematen, who yesterday held a joint press conference in Accra, during which their spokespersons slammed the electoral committee and the leadership of the party for what they described as “an electoral register in disarray.”

No reason was given why Nana Akufo Addo or his representative was not present at the press conference.

Speaking on behalf of Isaac Osei, Ken Amankwah, one of his associates, said the four aspirants had lost confidence in the electoral committee and thus they would no longer work with it or look up to it as an objective group of persons tasked to work towards a successful and credible congress.

Mr. Amankwa said the last straw that broke the camel's back was a document currently in circulation purporting to be the rules and regulations agreed on for the August 7 primaries.

“Two days ago, we saw this document and it has the rules and regulations but none of us has been given a copy and we were also not consulted, not even the four aspirants were consulted.

We cannot take this anymore and we would no longer work with the electoral committee,” Mr. Amankwah noted.

Yaw Boabeng Asamoah, who tried to save the situation, quickly grabbed the microphone and explained that Mr. Amankwah did not exactly mean that they were boycotting the electoral committee, but the latter insisted and repeated what he had said but said he would not explain to the journalists present where he saw the said document and who had it.

Felix Fonder addressed the conference on behalf of Prof. Frempong-Boateng and noted that though all parties had agreed to use a photo album for the voters' register and give copies to all aspirants by June 2, this promise had not been fulfilled.

He said the first draft of the register was received on the 16th of June and was 85% complete, even though it had less than a 60% photo complement.

“Moreover it was in a state of disarray with significant errors including same photos with different names, photos of women with men's names and vice versa, as well as numerous gaps with no photos at all,” explained Mr. Fonder.

Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey, when contacted, told DAILY GUIDE that the party's voters' register available to its headquarters was only a compilation of the registers that were received from the constituencies.

“We all agreed, together with the aspirants that we should use the same voters' register that was used for the constituency elections and what has being compiled, scanned and sent to the aspirants; we are scanning because the photocopies were not very legible so we invested some money and started to scan what came from the constituencies.

“They themselves agreed that the compilation and scanning take time so rather than wait for the whole thing to be completed, we should rather let them have what has been scanned as and when they are ready until eventually, they will receive the whole thing.

“A few issues were raised with regard to those whose names appeared without photos and those who had wrong names but we have had several meetings and agreed on what should be done with each specific case,” Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey added.

NPP notables that turned up for the news conference included former General Secretary Nana Ohene-Ntow and former chief executive of the Food and Drugs Board Emmanuel Agyarko.

Nana Prempeh, who represented Mr. Kodua at the news conference, virtually said nothing.

By Halifax Ansah-Addo