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29.11.2007 Politics

All aspiring delegates must submit to selection process

29.11.2007 LISTEN
By Daily Graphic

All members of the New Patriotic Party, who are not constituency officers and are desirous of voting at the December 22 congress, must submit themselves to the selection process of the party.

This is irrespective of whether they are ministers of State, members of Parliament (MPs), district chief executives (DCEs), national officers, and aspiring presidential candidates.

The National Organiser of the party, Mr Lord Commey, told the Daily Graphic that such personalities would be part of the six non-constituency executive members who would be selected at the emergency constituency conferences which were under way.

In a related development, the National Chairman of the NPP, Mr Peter Mac Manu, has said the party's time-tested processes of choosing delegates for congresses will be invoked from November 26, 2007 till December 7, 2007 to pick delegates for the December 22 congress.

Article 6 (18) of the party's constitution states that “Every constituency executive committee shall convene an extraordinary constituency delegates conference to elect, when required, six members of the constituency who are not constituency officers, together with the constituency officers, to attend the national delegates congress.”

Briefing the media after a national executive committee meeting at the party's headquarters on Tuesday, Mr Mac Manu said since the organisation of the party's first congress in 1992, it had resorted to those dynamic processes, which were nomination, selection and voting.

Accordingly, all the 230 constituency chairmen of the party would convene and preside over constituency emergency conferences to select four out of the 10 constituency executives and six members of the party who were in good standing to make up the 10 who would attend the congress to elect a flag bearer for the party.

Mr Mac Manu said the national headquarters of the party had directed that regional officers should supervise the conferences to elect the delegates.

He said the party members were conversant with the processes of selecting delegates and expressed the hope that they would be smooth.

The national chairman debunked the perception on tribalistic sentiments associated with the membership of the party and said the NPP was a national party that had equal representation at every nook and cranny of the country.

“We believe that the national dynamics and characteristics of one people with a common destiny have been vividly manifested over the years by the character and nature of the NPP,” he said.

He quoted Article 2 of the party's constitution, which talks about the aims and objectives of the party, which include sub-section (1) which, says, “To foster and actively promote unity among all the peoples of this country, regardless of ethnic origin, religion, position, gender, occupation status in society or political affiliation.”

He quoted Article 2 (19), which also states that “To maintain, in the interest of national unity, harmonious relations with all other political parties, notwithstanding any differences in ideologies,” and explained that the party would not bother maintaining harmonious relations with the National Democratic Congress (NDC) which had a diametrically opposing ideology with the NPP for the sake of national unity.

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