NPP Primaries In The Wake Of Covid-19: The Concern Of A Civil Servant

As a civil servant, I am enjoined by the ethics of my job to as much as possible remain politically neutral. Nevertheless, my political neutrality does not override my nationalistic nature.

It is against this backdrop that I want to air my views on how the New Patriotic Party (NPP) should organise their presidential and parliamentary primaries which is slated for 25th April 2020 without exposing their party members to the coronavirus. Before I am misconstrued and perceived as engaging in partisan politics, I want to reiterate my interest on this matter. As a privileged head of the public sensitisation task force of COVID 19 in my small conner, I want to guide the thinking of my fellow Ghanaians against the partisan engineered comments of political demagogues on this unavoidable primaries as well as protect my fellow Ghanaians against the coronavirus.

As typical of political propagandists, no matter how the Election Committee of the political party concerned put measures in place to ensure the observance of social distancing, they will still have negative stories to tell. Nevertheless, no matter what they say, the primaries ought to come on and it must come on. If the primaries is postponed, some sort of political anarchy will be created in the rank and file of the ruling party and that will disrupt the smooth administration of the country. This will in turn adversely affect the ordinary citizens who are benefitting from the flagship policies of the current Nana Addo led administration.

My advice to the public is therefore simple. These political demagogues have their right to free speech, so they may take advantage of our poor understanding of political issues to play on our minds. Nevertheless, we also have the right to treat their ill-conceived concerns with the highest level of contempt. I mean, just ignore them!

To the New Patriotic Party, I want to suggest to you to come out with an innovative way of conducting this primaries so that the President's directive on social distancing will not be breached. In this case, I will further suggest that the Election Committee of the party can consider moving from one electoral area to another with same ballot boxes and representatives of the various candidates with the right authorities to enforce social distancing in each place the Election Committee finds itself.

On a more serious note, the candidates must for once, act right! What do I mean? They must completely desist from camping the delegates. After all, they will not camp them in 5 star hotels. Camping the delegates will lead to the breach of the social distancing principle, thereby exposing them to the Coronavirus. Aside this, it is usually a platform for vote buying, which is a crime in Ghana. That is serious! How can law makers or potential law makers openly engage in crime in the guise of nobody can detect?

To ensure that these constitutional deviants do not for their capricious interest, endanger the lives of our fellow citizens, I want to appeal to the Commander-in-Chief to order the security apparatus to prevent this nonsense. I believe when the order comes, the media and the delegates can help to stop this constitutional deviant act, that is perpetrated for reasons, being purely selfish.

In conclusion, however, I want to also appeal to the consciences of these delegates to act right lest they end up selling their birth rights. This attitude of receiving monies from these politicians is the reason why they often ignore these poor delegates after elections.

Bala Ali
The Civil Servant