NDC Presidential Election Must Be Free And Fair – Goosie

An aspiring flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has called on the party's technical committee, taking care of issues to do with the upcoming presidential election, to resolve concerns raised over the process.

According to him, addressing the concerns will ensure a fair playing field for all the seven aspirants in the race.

“That is why the aspirants asked for a clear set of guidelines that would operationalize all these matters and processes for the conduct of the primary in a manner that is free and fair and in a manner that establishes a level playing field. That has been the concern among six of the aspirants.”

“The concern now is that this technical committee that has been set up as a clearinghouse…should get to work and resolve these problems,” he said in an interview on the Citi Breakfast Show on Tuesday.

Mr. Tanoh said they won't take any excuse from the party if things go wrong because a lot of people have invested their time and efforts into the election slated for February 23, 2019.

“We don't want any grandstanding where people will say take it or leave it. That's not going to happen, we are not going to take it or leave it. People have invested time and efforts not only aspirants but constituency executives, branch executives and among others.”

“They have wasted time, efforts and a lot of investments to make this process work. We owe it to them to make this process free and fair,” Goosie Tanoh added.

Goosie Tanoh's team wants printing of ballots papers halted

The Goosie Tanoh Campaign Team had earlier demanded the immediate halt of the printing of ballot papers for the presidential election.

Though the NDC said it had re-looked at its guidelines and had gotten approval from the National Executive Council for the finalized guidelines following an earlier petition, the agitations have not died down.

The Communications Director for Goosie Tanoh, Abdul Nasser Alidu, who is also a member of the NDC's Joint Technical Committee set up to clean the register, outlined some concerns to Citi News.

“How many ballots are you printing? If you want to have agents in there, what exactly are the guidelines governing how they are going to monitor the ballot papers?”

“So for instance, today, if an agent is unhappy with the process, who do they complain to? There is no process for that. Because if they complain to the printer, the printer will tell them, I have no contract with you.”

Petition from agents

Some agents of some the flagbearer aspirants had also petitioned the NDC's Elections Committee and raised concerns with the cleaning of the party's electoral register.

Some six aspirants of the party had earlier petitioned the party, demanding a review of the guidelines for the upcoming election.

The six had previously raised issues with the electoral register and the choice of printing firm for the ballot papers.

The six aspirants had said the party should award the contract for the printing of the ballot papers to a trustworthy firm such as the Assembly Press, to ensure that some of the irregularities that rocked the party's national executive election held in November 2018 do not re-occur this time around.

Source: citinewsroom.com | Ghana