All is not well with the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in Domeabra Obom Constituency in the Greater Accra Region as a result of the recent branch elections held in the constituency which is one of the few seats that NDC has been winning since 1992.
A leading member of the party in the constituency, Godwin Mahama has sent a strong petition, a copy of which is in the possession of DAILY GUIDE, to the leadership of the party asking them to annul the branch because he says the just-ended exercise was a ‘sham’.
According to the petitioner who is also a member of the NDC National Communication Team, the party did not follow the regulations approved by the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party but rather did their own thing to select the branch executives.
The petitioner wants the Regional Secretariat to assist the Election Directorate to open nomination in all the 68 branches for fresh election and the nomination forms and the branch register should be submitted to the branches two days ahead of the elections.
According to the petitioner, a timetable for the elections should be drawn and copies sent to all branches ahead of the election and members not eligible to contest the election must be disqualified as the Regulations and the NDC constitution demanded.
The petitioner claimed that the names of executives of some branches were prepared by one person with the support of the Election Directorate and alleged that members of the Election Directorate signed for some of them and in some instances, thump printed for them, adding “there are some people whose names are on the collation sheets as branch executives who do not know they have been “fixed” as branch executives.”
Another argument of the petitioner was that the registration was done on house to house, farm to farm basis and it took the benevolence of some comrades who went round the various branches to register members after the branch executives boycotted the exercise over lack of motivation.
“Some of us raised alarm that these persons will not conduct free and fair election, therefore we needed independent minded persons to conduct the election. This plea fell on death ears,” he said, adding the shambolic manner in which some of the supposed branch elections were conducted does not augur well for the NDC.
By William Yaw Owusu