UNSUBSTANTIATED rumours of party executives’ manipulation against popular grassroots choice of persons to be nominated for the Municipal and District Chief Executive (MDCE) posts has begun to trigger series of agitations in some districts of the Ashanti Region.
The below the surface tensions, which have been building up for the past two weeks, may soon blow into full uprising against the Nana Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) as angry party activists continue to gather to call on leadership to watch out.
Yesterday at the district capital of the Ejisu-Juaben Municipality, NPP activists infuriated at a purported nomination of one Madam Serwaa Dekye as MCE took to the streets of Ejisu to express their displeasure over the said appointment.
The party members, including some polling station executives, declared that they would go every length to dislodge the said nominee from becoming the MCE even at the cost of their lives, intimating that no one will be able to abate the storm that is coming.
It followed a similar one held at Kunsu in the Ahafo-Ano South District last Friday during which party foot soldiers expressed similar sentiments against the candidature of one Boateng said to be a constituency chairman.
There were similar agitations at Bonwire, Kumawu and other districts on the same issues which the party people claimed they were not consulted on the appointment of candidates.
At Ejisu, the demonstrators said they helped the party with post-defeat rebuilding at the various polling stations and the course and fight for comeback, catapulting the NPP and its presidential candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo, to power.
Madam Vivian Opoku, Secretary of the NPP Women’s Wing, who read a petition against the purported nominee, said: “With our souls and our blood we will redeem Ejisu, our home from intruders.”
The crowd chanted that they did not want any hostility in the municipality and that the appointing authority needed to withdraw the appointee if what they heard as rumour was anything to go by.
For them, the nominee is an alien who did not play any role in the struggle for power in the Juabeng and Ejisu constituencies.
They threatened to use mobilisation of ground forces to fight the appointment of Serwaa Dekye unless her nomination is withheld, noting that it would be in the interest of party executives to prevail on the President to prevent further flare-ups.
The NPP activists stated that they were not interested in a confrontation with government since it is theirs, yet they want a known person in the district to be appointed MCE of Ejisu-Juaben Municipal Assembly.
From Ernest Kofi Adu, Kumasi