Media campaigns wouldn’t help aspirants—Ben Ephson

The Editor of the Daily Dispatch says the race amongst the various candidates contesting to lead the NPP in election 2008 cannot be won in the media.

Ben Ephson who is also an elections expert was speaking about the formal declaration yesterday by the former Deputy Interior Minister, Capt Nkrabeah Effah Dartey to seek the flagbearership of the NPP.

Mr Ephson said press launches and early starts do not matter much when it comes to the race for the flagbearership of parties as most of the work is done quite away from the media.

“This race to be a flagbearer is not even one that the general public has control over. The race to be the flagbearer of any political party is decided by delegates. Each of the 230 constituencies will have 10 delegates each. That means 2,300 delegates each. As we speak now only 4 in each constituency are known. We are talking about 230 times 6 delegates who are not known and will be selected later.

“We have MPs, Council of Elders and so on; those aspirants who know what the game is about, chairmen, secretaries and organizing secretaries, are constant delegates and these are the 3 that you are sure of. So what they did a year ago was to ensure that they got their activists and their people they can trust, elected to those positions. Once you have these people elected into positions, you can then influence the election of other delegates so that is important,” he said.

Mr Ephson said the decision by the former Deputy Interior Minister to defend drug offenders is one issue that would seriously affect his chances. He however added that Capt Effah Dartey could have some things going for him as well.

“He shot himself in one foot with a very big bullet by saying that he will defend drug peddlers. There is nothing wrong legally but perception wise, I think that he has done himself a lot of damage. One thing that we also gathered from the 990 that we spoke to and we spoke to some NDC delegates at their congress the delegates are getting a bit of fatigue with people whose occupation they may write politician”.

So Captain's advantage is that he is coming with a legal and military background. So clearly he may have an idea of what Ghanaians will want. He has to get a nod from the NPP delegates,” he said.