NPP has guidelines to select flag bearer - JAK

Accra, Aug. 9, GNA - President John Agyekum Kufuor on Tuesday warned that any Minister of State who overstepped the due processes of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the nomination of a flag bearer for the 2008 General Election risked losing his job.
Describing the members of the Executive as smart and well carved for the job and ambitious as expected of every politician, he admonished them to bid their time and not side step the lay down procedures of the NPP.
President Kufuor was addressing his third media encounter at the Castle Osu since he became the Head of State in 2001.
He said he was the man in charge and quiet fit for the job and expressed the hope that the support and cooperation he currently enjoyed from his Ministers would continue to enable him to complete his term successfully.
President Kufuor, who responded to media bashing that he was practising nepotism turned to his brother, Dr Kwame Addo Kufuor, Minister of Defence, and said he was a self-made man, who would have contested as a Member of Parliament in the 1992 Election, which the NPP boycotted, and had since won subsequent elections on his own merit. He said it was not politically prudent not to appoint him as Minister because he was his brother.
President Kufuor said Mr Joseph Henry Mensah, the Senior Minister, had also contributed immensely to the development of the nation and as a young man in his thirties he became an Economic Advisor to the First President, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah.
Denying him appointment because he was his brother in-law was not tenable, he noted.