Aggrieved NPP members invoking curses in a river at Juaben
The General Secretary of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Boadu, has directed that all party supporters, who in recent times have ‘misconducted’ themselves by publicly invoking curses on party officials using deities or gods, should be suspended immediately by their respective constituency executives.
He has, therefore, given the constituency executives where such unfortunate incidents have taken place a one-week ultimatum to quickly identify such ‘miscreants’ and suspend them from the party before any further disciplinary actions are taken against them at the national level.
The General Secretary, who gave the directive at a press conference held at the party’s headquarters in Accra yesterday to give a programme outline of the upcoming parliamentary primaries of the party, said as a well-disciplined party, the NPP would not tolerate such misconducts by any supporter or supporters.
Party Structures
He said the party has structures to deal with party grievances and that no member of the party has the right to ‘misconduct’ himself or herself and disgrace the party in public on what he called ‘mere rumours’.
“The perpetrators of these shameful acts will have to be brought to book or disciplined, since the party has a constitution and rules of conduct,” he stressed, adding that if the constituency executives fail to do that, the national executive members will do that with alacrity.
“If any member of the party does not agree with any decision whether at the constituency or regional level, he or she can make an appeal or petition at the national level; that is why we are here, but not resort to invoking curses on innocent people.”
Unopposed Candidates
He said in most of the cases where candidates were going unopposed, a lot of discussions and consultations took place to allow other contestants to willingly step down in the larger interest of the party, since the party had vowed to retain all its current seats and even win more to have huge majority in Parliament and would like to go into the election with a united front.
He said the party intended to record landslide victory in the 2020 general election and, therefore, did a lot of consultations and discussions in that direction.
According to him, any good member of the party would never disagree or rebel against any decision taken in the best interest of the party at the national level.
Primaries Date
The General Secretary also announced at the press conference that the party had tentatively set Saturday, June 20, for the party’s parliamentary primaries in 168 out of the 169 constituencies where the party has sitting Members of Parliament (MPs), with elections which are expected to take place at the electoral area levels in strict compliance with the Covid-19 health protocols.
Decorum & Respect
At the press conference, the General Secretary warned all qualified candidates to be decorous in their campaign, stressing that candidates who would engage in ‘dirty’ campaign would be disqualified from the contest in spite of the fact that they had been cleared to contest.
“Candidates shall campaign on issues and refrain from levelling unsubstantiated allegations, personal attacks and vilification against their opponents,” he said, stressing that no candidate shall undertake any activity.
114 Constituencies
Apart from the Ayawaso West Wuogon, which the party has decided to maintain the sitting MP, Lydia Alhassan, who went to Parliament in January, 2019 via a by-election, elections will take place in 114 constituencies across the country, with 54 sitting MPs going unopposed.
The Ashanti Region has 15 unopposed MPs, which is the highest followed by the Eastern Region, which has eight MPs going unopposed and the Greater Accra Region having seven MPs going unopposed. Western Region has five MPs going unopposed, Bono Region has four, Northern Region has three, Bono East, Central, Ahafo and Western North regions have two each, with Oti, Savannah, Upper East and Upper West regions having one each.
The General Secretary, however, said that election in the Kwadaso Constituency in the Ashanti Region had been suspended till further notice because of problems with the constituency’s voting album, while elections in Dormaa Central in the Bono Region and Gushegu in the Northern Region would also not take place till further notice.
According to him, the elections which will be supervised by the officials of the Electoral Commission, in collaboration with respective National Parliamentary Vetting Committees, will start at 7:00 a.m. and close at 1:00 p.m., with counting expected to be done at the various electoral areas and the final collation of results done at the respective constituency offices by EC officials for winners to be ultimately declared.
“The Constituency Album, which has been broken down into Electoral Area Album shall be used to identify all delegates who are eligible to vote in respective electoral areas,” he said.
By Thomas Fosu Jnr