NDC to elect prez candidate in November

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) will hold a delegates congress in November to elect a flagbearer for the 2004 presidential elections.

The Minority Leader, Mr Alban Bagbin, who said this, noted that the congress will be preceded by a gathering of old and new executives of the party to discuss the way forward for it. Mr Bagbin, who was speaking at Wa to party loyalists, said the NDC is poised to recapture political power in the next elections.

He said the successful holding of the party’s congress in Accra recently has demonstrated “to all and sundry that the NDC is truly a national party which is also committed to the tenets of intra-party democracy. The closely run chairmanship position of the NDC at its recently ended national delegates congress has proved skeptics wrong that the party lacks internal democracy and is controlled by certain personalities,” the Minority Leader said.

He said, “on the contrary, members of the party showed their commitment by sacrificing time and money to attend the congress.” Mr Bagin accused the Kufuor administration of instituting measures, which have further impoverished the broad masses of the people. “The Kufuor administration has failed to formulate a long-term economic development plan to substitute the Vision 2020 document, which it has discarded on assuming political office,” he said.

Mr Bagbin told that gathering that no long term growth can be attained through the Poverty Reduction Strategy document which the government keeps presenting as its vision for growth. “A year-and-half into the NPP governance, the manufacturing and industrial sectors of the economy are finding it extremely difficult to break even,” the Minority Leader said.

He urged the students to work hard to mobilize more people, especially those who have reached the voting age, to join the youth wings of the party in preparation towards the next polls. “You must use the next one-and-a-half to swell the ranks of the NDC members to enable the party to chalk up a convincing victory in the 2004 polls,” Mr Bagbin added.