NPP Ready For Congress

PETER MAC Manu, National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has declared that the party is ready for Saturday's extraordinary congress to elect its flagbearer for the 2008 general elections.

Addressing the press at the party's headquarters in Accra yesterday, Mr. Mac Manu stated that the list of delegates who would be eligible to vote at the congress had been digitally compiled and copies made available to the 17 aspirants vying for the the flagbearership slot.

So far, about 2,326 delegates are expected to cast their votes and it is expected that some of the aspirants would also vote as delegates to the congress.

He described the congress as a “Golden Jubilee Congress” which would be conducted on a hi-tech basis to prove to Ghanaians and the rest of the world that the NPP had come of age and was ready to take democracy to another level.

“As of now, the delegates have been chosen from all constituencies under the supervision of Regional Officers, who counter-signed the lists after the Constituency Chairmen had signed, and these, along with pictures of the delegates, have been received at the Party Headquarters.

“As required by the party's constitution, these were passed on to the Election Committee which has put them on DVD and distributed to the Electoral Commission and all the aspirants,” he indicated.

The Chairman disclosed that while preparations are in progress, the party has set up a liaison mechanism which brings all the aspirants or their representatives together every week to meet with the Election Committee and members of the Steering Committee of the party.

“These measures have been taken to ensure that at the end of the exercise, every contestant will be satisfied that he had won or lost fairly, and therefore has no reason not to accept the result,” Mr. Mac Manu stressed.

He assured Ghanaians in general and party faithful in particular that there would be no rift after the elections and that the party trusted and believed in the intelligence and integrity of their candidates to live up to the arduous and complex exercise ahead of them.

Mr. Mac Manu hoped that “we will come up with a winner who will go on to receive the approval of the Ghanaian voting public to give the NPP another bite at running the affairs of this country after 2008.”

He mentioned that the party had reserved rooms at the International Hostel, close to the congress venue, to house all the delegates and that arrangements had been put in place for all aspirants to have access to them.

Concerning the press, he stated that over 500 journalists had applied for accreditation but said the party could not meet all the demands.

The party Chairman warned individuals or any group of persons who had any hidden agenda to cause problems at the congress to stay away since comprehensive security measures had been put in place to counter all those agents provocateurs.

The National Chairman ruled out the issue of proxy voting since according to him it is those whose names appeared that would be allowed to vote.

By Wisdom Peter Awuku