John Dramani Mahama and Dr. Kwabena Duffuor
The Duffuor Campaign Team has fired the first salvo at the doorsteps of former President John Dramani Mahama, a contender in the National Democratic Congress (NDC) presidential race, accusing him of attempting to win at all cost.
The team said the ex-President, who is trying to stage a comeback, has hijacked the entire electoral process leading up to the polls, with the help of the party’s functional executives.
The scheming, according to James Agbey, Head of the Duffuor Campaign Team’s Security, is “extremely dubious, criminal, and illegal,” and the inconsistencies in the register are a “display of utter greed by Mahama to win at all cost.”
For him, this is simply the opening shot in a series of campaigns by the Mahama side to destabilize the NDC for its “selfish and parochial agenda.”
He questioned whether the main opposition party will have the moral right to complain to the Electoral Commission in 2024 about similar irregularities when the party’s leaders are scheming internal elections in favour of one candidate.
Mr. Agbey said there was no need for intra-party democracy if NDC leaders couldn’t guarantee free and fair elections, in a statement condemning what he saw as collusion between the party’s Functional Executive Committee and former President John Mahama’s Campaign Team to rig the presidential primary.
The Duffuor Campaign Team has already filed a writ in court alleging that the party failed to deliver the needed photo album register five weeks to the polls, as required by the party’s regulations.
According to Dr. Duffuor, a partial photo album register was given to his team on May 4, a few days ahead of the elections instead of March when they had submitted a request for one.
The injunction application seeks to halt the presidential primary, with the plaintiff claiming that the partial delivery of the photo album to his representatives on May 4, 2023 was out of time, given the magnitude of the verification exercise required of them prior to the internal elections on May 13, 2023.
He said data from 220 out of the 275 constituencies have been verified, and that an exceptional list of 74,799 has been created which cannot be verified because of scanty information.
Mr. Agbey alleged the irregularities were part of a plan to have Mr. Mahama elected as flagbearer, claiming that the proceedings leading up to the primary are a “charade” and “choreographed shenanigan” orchestrated by a “selfish” and “parochial” section among the party’s national leadership.
“In fact, I do take issue with the manner the Mahama camp is conniving with the Functional Executive Committee (FEC) of the NDC to disenfranchise a good number of delegates and rig the [electoral] processes for Mahama,” he intimated.
By Ernest Kofi Adu