Bryan Acheampong seals Suhum deal: I'll not go to court

Bryan Acheampong, the man who fiercely contested Mr Frederick Opare-Ansah, Deputy Communications Minister in the Suhum NPP parliamentary primaries has denied media speculations he is threatening a court action against the party.

The IT Consultant presents a fine reason for his latest disclosure: “[The New Patriotic Party has] an election to win.”

The National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party on Friday asked Mr Acheampong to step aside and give way to the incumbent MP and Deputy Minister of Communications Mr Frederick Opare-Ansah.

The decision was reached after several attempts to secure a parliamentary aspirant for the constituency to run on the ticket of the NPP landed on the rocks.

While there have been at least two ties in the party's primaries in the constituency, the national executive has had to postpone some few others that bore marks of clashes and near-bloodbath.

Mr Bryan Acheapong on Monday told Joy FM's Kojo Oppong Nkrumah he would not go to court on the decision of the party although he disagreed in principle with it.

“I disagree with the decision, however, under the circumstances I'm not going to contest the decision. I have put it on record that I will not contest the decision of NEC; there is no time to do that, absolutely no time. So I have to come on board to make it happen, make the party win,” he said.

According to Mr Acheampong, seeking a court interpretation of the party's constitution, as he had earlier threatened, could deal a big blow at the NPP, especially, at a time it is strategising for better fortunes in the December polls.

“Contesting the decision might mean dragging the name of Suhum, probably putting supporters on the street, chaos; we have an election to win.”

Although he is yet to get on the campaign trail to garner support for his former contender, for now, he has declared the next few days as “cool-off time.”

“I am just taking some time off to cool off… we have been fighting this since February, probably not seen my wife too since then. So I take some time off and look at other options and then see what we'll do next,” he said.

Asked whether his position on the matter meant an end to the “Suhum saga” that has rocked the NPP for months, Mr Acheampong responded in the affirmative, stating, “You could say that.”

Broken promise

The NPP General Secretary, Nana Ohene-Ntow on July 2, 2008 told Joy News the prescription of the NPP constitution in the event of a tie.

“Our party constitution says that if in any internal election there is a tie, you run it until there is a winner.

"This is turning out to be a special case, we really haven't had the occasion where you've run two times and you still get a tie so I think we are now being presented with a special case that we might have to look at. But in the meantime we have our constitution to guide us for now and the constitution simply says that if you go for ten times and there is a tie, keep going until you break that deadlock,” Mr Ohene Ntow told the media.

But the decision of the NPP's big-wigs rather runs parallel to the provisions of its own constitution, for which reason Mr Acheampong wanted to conduct a “judicial test.”

Author: Fiifi Koomson