Trouble looms in NPP over open campaign for Alan

The Ghanaian Lens newspaper says the December 22 Congress of the New Patriotic Party increasingly faces imminent postponement as indications are that some peeved party faithful may drag the party to court over the processes that have been used to select delegates in several constituencies across the country.

“The Ghanaian Lens can today reveal that the National Headquarters of the NPP has received a deluge of written complaints from several constituencies across the country over selection of delegates.”

The paper said when it spoke to some of the persons behind the complaints lodged with the NPP National Executives, it was pretty clear that all of them believed that the process of selection/election of delegates from their respective constituencies had been skewed to favour President Kufuor's preferred candidate, Alan 'Cash' Kyerematen.

The petitions are flying in from all over across the country. In Accra alone, petitions have been received from at least four constituencies, including Ablekuma Central and President Kufuor's Ayawaso West Wuogon constituency. Information available to The Ghanaian Lens indicates that petitions have also been received from constituencies in the Ashanti Region, Central Region, and Western Region over selection of delegates.

“But one NPP insider told this paper that the spectre of court cases may not affect the December 22nd Congress.”

“I know of these threats to go to court, but if the constituencies that do not have any lawsuits hanging over them could form a quorum, then the congress would not be affected,” the insider stated.

The insider agreed that these troubles that are compelling people to start looking towards the law courts could be a ploy by some persons to disenfranchise particular constituencies that some aspirants might be seeing as unfavourable.

“Highly knowledgeable sources within the NPP National Executive Committee have told this paper that the situation, with regards to complains about strenuous efforts to skew the selection of delegates to favour Alan Kyerematen, is not different in the three northern regions.”

The Ghanaian Lens said it has learnt that the NPP national headquarters has received a petition from the Bongo constituency, where the chairman of the constituency, Alhaji Raulf Abolga, together with his Women's Organiser, Madam Janet Asumda, together with other constituency executives have been out-manoeuvred and displaced by the DCE.

Investigations by The Ghanaian Lens indicate that the DCE, Francis Asampana, apparently working under direct instructions from the Castle, called a meeting of a few pliable polling station chairmen in the constituency to select/elect delegates from the Bongo constituency.

But the Chairman, the Women's Organiser, and other aggrieved executives of the Bongo constituency are challenging the list of so-called delegates that has been prepared from what one of them described to the paper as “an illegal meeting conducted by the DCE” to elect/select delegates.

Indications are that several DCEs have succumbed to the terror-tactics that saw President Kufuor dismiss twelve DCEs in one swoop.

Quite apart from the fact all the dismissed DCEs were said to be persons who were not particularly 'friendly' to Alan Cash, all the dismissed DCEs also have the peculiarity of being from the northern parts of the country. The spectre of being disgracefully dismissed from office through the media, as has happened to twelve of his colleagues, must have been driving the Bongo DCE to do the kinds of things that the Bongo constituency executives are complaining about.

The paper said as went to press, credible information from the Upper West Region had it that the Minister of Tourism & Diasporan Relations, Stephen Asamoah Boateng, Mr. Paul Afoko, together with the Upper West Regional Minister, Mr George Hikah Benson, and the Mayor of Tamale, Mohammed Adam Amin Anta, were in the Upper West Region where they are waging a strenuous campaign for Alan Cash.

The Ghanaian Lens promised to publish a blow by blow account of how the government officials are campaigning for Alan Cash Kyerematen in the Upper West Region.