NDC Congress In Danger

Leadership of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) is likely to change the date for its national delegates' congress to elect its presidential candidate as well as parliamentary candidates for the 2016 elections – originally scheduled for Saturday, November 7, 2015.

It has emerged that the November 7 chosen by the party is the date the chiefs and people of Anlo in the Volta Region would be celebrating their annual Hogbetsotso festival, with President John Mahama expected to be in attendance.

Hogbetsotso, which was derived from the Ewe language and translates as, the festival of exodus or “coming from Hogbe (Notsie),” is celebrated annually on the first Saturday of November; and was instituted about four decades ago.

With the Volta Region being the stronghold of the NDC, leadership of the party is therefore said to be considering the option of changing the date in order to avoid having the congress date conflicting with the celebration of the festival.

That aside, the NDC has also not completed the vetting of its parliamentary candidates, especially in the Greater Accra Region; and after the vetting the candidates would need some time to campaign.

The committee responsible would therefore need ample time to complete the vetting process to enable potential candidates enough time to campaign for votes before the actual congress.

But credible information gathered by DAILY GUIDE indicates that leadership of the NDC would therefore be meeting sometime today to choose a new date for the congress.

Confusion has already erupted in the party ahead of the congress over the use of the newly introduced biometric membership cards which would be used for the voting, with some aspirants, especially new entrants, complaining of the incumbent Members of Parliament (MPs) taking advantage of the process.

They claim that the MPs hijacked most of the registration forms which were used in issuing the new biometric membership cards as their agents were in-charge of the registration processes.

Issues
An aspirant for the Sekyere Afram Plains parliamentary primaries of the NDC, who was disqualified for quoting the voter ID numbers of his branch endorsements, has questioned the position of the committee that vetted him, describing it as unconstitutional.

Myjoynline.com quoted Gumanga Kwesi Emmanuel as saying that the reason for his disqualification discredits the credibility of the NDC's current biometric registration.

He was disqualified for quoting the National voter ID card numbers of branch executives who endorsed his forms.

The committee said he should have provided the old party card numbers of the 85 branch executives instead of their voter ID card numbers.

But Gumanga says the committee got it wrong in that the NDC biometric ID card was based on the national biometric ID system.

'Even now, the interim receipts given all NDC party members when you register quote your voter ID number. So how can quoting the voter ID card numbers of my branch endorsements disqualify me, when these are party people who can be verified on the ground?' he asked rhetorically.

In any case, he said, 'There's nowhere in the party's guidelines where somebody could be disqualified based on provision of new or old biometric numbers.'

Gumanga has since petitioned the party hierarchy.
He wants what he has noted as 'the cycle where other party loyalists are sidelined in contesting positions' to be broken.

By Charles Takyi-Boadu