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Awingobit Urges PNC Leaders To Address Flagbearership Woes

PNC Awingobit Urges PNC Leaders To Address Flagbearership Woes
AUG 6, 2020 LISTEN

A flagbearer hopeful of the Peoples' National Convention (PNC), Samson Asaaki Awingobit is asking the party's council of Elders to intervene in the disagreement between the various factions.

Mr. Awingobit who has been meeting PNC leadership in parts of the country says their members are clamouring for a united front ahead of the December polls.

The electoral fate of the PNC hangs in a balance due to internal party wrangling.

While a faction led by the Chairman, Bernard Mornah, says there's no preparation for an internal election towards the selection of a flagbearer; the other faction steered by a former flagbearer of the party, Edward Nasigiri Mahama, has a different plan.

However, in an interview with Citi News, Mr. Awingobit pleaded with the party’s Council of Elders to find a lasting solution to the challenges hindering the conduct of the congress for the selection of a flagbearer and other national executives.

“After the declaration, I started meeting interest groups in our party. I met, Mr. Edward Mahama, the national executives, all the 16 regional chairmen of the party, and the regional secretaries. I went on a tour of the Upper East Region. I will want to implore by appealing to our Council of Elders to take the opportunity to step in and take leadership of the party and form an ad-hoc committee and let them go with the EC officials to affirm by popular acclamation to those that are contesting to be executives and move ahead to conduct the congress to elect the flagbearer for the party because there is no time on our side. It is not because of their challenges that my ambition will be in vain.”

Meanwhile, General Secretary of the PNC, Attik Mohammed says with barely five months to the 2020 election, the processes for the congress should be finalised by the end of August.

“At the congress, we hold the two activities concurrently whereby we elect the flagbearer and the next set of national executives who will be running the affairs of the party for the next four years. So hopefully, by the end of August, we should be heading towards congress. If anyone accuses me of not wanting the party, is lying; to put it bluntly. This is because, I have said that, the tenure of all the current executives has expired and we should have renewed our mandate through Congress by December last year.”

On his part, the PNC's youth organizer, Awudu Ishak, is oblivious of any such plan to elect a flagbearer for the December polls.

“The leader of the party who is Edward Mahama serving as an Ambassador-at-large serving under Akufo-Addo’s government seems not to be interested in the forward march of the PNC. On a number of occasions when the constitution has given the Chairman of the party the necessary powers to convene a national executive committee meeting in consultation with the leader of the party for all of these matters to be discussed, the leader usually shoots down such proposals insisting that at an appropriate time, he will call for that particular meeting as far as the reorganizational plan is concerned because he does not want to hear anything about the national executive committee meeting that will set the motion and propel the PNC for the election of 2020. All the dates that have been set have elapsed so effectively, there is no date. Everything is now in limbo”, he complained.

PNC and elections in Ghana

Aside from Mr. Awingobit who is Executive Secretary of the Importers and Exporters Association, former PNC Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central, David Apasara, has also served notice to contest in the polls to change the dwindling fortunes of the party.

The PNC has contested all national elections since the inception of the Fourth Republic apart from the 1992 parliamentary election, which was boycotted along with other opposition parties.

The last time the PNC elected new officials was in 2015 when Edward Mahama became its presidential candidate for the 2016 elections.

---citinewsroom

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