6 NDC Presidential Aspirants Beg For Further Reduction Of Filing Fee

Despite slashing filing fees for the 2020 National Democratic Congress (NDC) presidential primaries, six aspirants say they want even further reductions.The initial fees announced by the NDC General Secretary was ¢ 400,000. But this was slashed to ¢ 300,000 after the party’s Council of Elders intervened following a petition from eight aspirants.

But there is a second petition once again to the Council of Elders chaired by party founder former President Rawlings.

It is signed by NDC stalwart Alban S.K Bagbin, Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, Goosie Tanoh, Prof. Joshua Alabi, Sylvester Adinam Mensah and Nurideen Iddrisu.

This time, the aspirants have proposed ¢ 150,000 as filing fees.

They have also proposed ¢ 50,000 more to be paid a day before the elections scheduled for 26^th January 2019.

The petition was laced with praise and commendation for the Council of Elders for their “swift”, “confidence-restoring” and “constructive”’ response to their first petition.

They then turned Oliver Twist with fresh demands for more reductions and concessions contained in at least 10 proposals.

The aspirants who have already paid ¢ 20,000 for nomination forms said it is “extremely important” that the filing fees reflect the grassroot understanding of the party’s social democratic ideology.

The aspirants noted that ¢ 150,000 makes sense because every presidential primaries since 2012, the fee is increased by ¢ 50,000.

The NDC charged ¢ 50,000 as filing fees in the 2012 presidential primaries and ¢ 100,000 in the 2016 edition.

They also want the Council of Elders to further push back the date of the polls to the last week of February.

In the first petition, they had suggested March 2019 rejecting the January 19, 2019 date set by the NDC National Executives Committee.

The Council of Elders made concessions by pushing the January 19 date to January 26 and rejected the March proposal. They now want February.

The aspirants also want the deadline for the submission of nomination forms changed again after the Council of Elders pushed it from 13-14 December to 17-18 December.

Now the aspirants want the end of December.

They still insist, national executives found to have declared support for any of the candidates, to recuse themselves from the process to find the party’s next flagbearer.

Source: Ghana|myjoyonline.com