Weija NPP kicks against 'ghost' MCE

Polling station chairmen and leading gurus of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Weija Constituency, which falls into the newly created Weija Municipal District Assembly, have threatened to rebel if government foists anybody on them other than their preferred candidates as MCE.

Speaking to The Daily Searchlight newspaper on Tuesday, the polling station chairmen and leading representatives of the NPP in the Weija constituency said that so far they knew of only two persons who have approached them to be referred to government as possible candidates for the position of MCE, and that if anybody else was named outside of these two, there would be trouble.

“If they want us to rebel in this election year, then they should continue with what they are doing and surprise us with a strange name,” the NPP reps threatened.

Explaining their case, the diehard NPP supporters explained that a few months ago, Weija was raised to the level of a Municipality by the government. When this happened, the NPP in the locality started casting around for possible candidates who can best advance the interest of the party in the constituency.

They said that in this direction, they identified two persons, who subsequently wrote applications backed by full CVs on why they should be considered for the post. After looking these applications over, the local constituency office of the NPP forwarded it to the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, which was supposed to vet the names and subsequently send them to the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) for vetting.

However, to their shock, they learned that the BNI had moved in force into the constituency and was doing due diligence on a woman named Tina Mensah as the possible candidate for the post of MCE.

“We are shocked and surprised! They are bringing a woman, one we do not know. Weija has become a Municipal District Assembly. Already we have two people who have passed through our hands at the constituency office of the New Patriotic Party, where they presented their applications, and after going through us, we presented them to the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development who were expected to hand the applications over to the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI). We had expected that the BNI would come to do inquiries on the two people that we had presented to become our MCE, but strangely what is happening is that the BNI is rather making inquiries about a woman called Tina Mensah, who is alleged to be boasting that she is going to be the next MCE,” they said.

They said that the local executives of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) are up in arms over the matter, especially now that the BNI has been asking opinion leaders in the constituency about the matter.

“As polling station chairmen we do not know the woman Tina and have never heard of her. If anybody tries to foist her on us there would be trouble,” they said.

Later, speaking to a leading member of the NPP in the constituency and a patron of the party Mr. Alex Tenkorang, he said that he had heard of the rumours about the woman called Tina Mensh. He however said that he did not believe that the government would do anything that would endanger its interests in the constituency, especially in this election year.

Source: The Daily Searchlight