Twenty-one aspirants in the Ablekuma West Constituency elections of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) have secured an injunction from the Accra High Court against the upcoming delegates election.
According to the court report, the plaintiffs sought to restrain the National Secretariat of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the Electoral Commission (EC) and the Ablekuma West NPP from holding the constituency executive elections because they believe the processes leading to the elections were not fair to them.
In the report, the plaintiffs [aspirants] stated that the challenges associated with the Ablekuma West elections began during the picking of nomination forms for the various positions. The process of picking the nomination forms, they indicated, was flawed with challenges.
“There were issues. The vetting was full of insults and we have written petitions to the national headquarters, General Secretary, Elections Committee at the constituency, to the regional chairman, and up to date, there has not been any respond.”
Ablekuma West Aspirants
According to the aspirants, some of the polling station aspirants took the issue to court but withdrew the matter to be settled amicably but no one has called till date. “We picked forms to contest for various positions in the constituency and after the vetting, the Election Committee refused to invite us for deliberations on the elections.”
The aspirants explained that the committee chairman was to call and notify them of the processes, when, where and how the voting would be done, but this was not done. Subsequently, the aspirants posited that they wrote a letter to the committee to meet them because they were to be given an album for the voting which also didn’t happen.
“We wrote a letter to the election committee, chaired by the Great Accra Regional Secretary of the NPP, Charles Parker Nii Odailai, but they said they were not ready to meet us. We are entitled to the album but all the 21 of us have not been given the voting album. The arrangements for the voting, we don’t know, we just heard on air that voting would be done on Sunday.
“We used our own means to get a provisional album and about 95% of contacts numbers we provided to them [vetting committee] on the album were wrong. They had changed some of the digits in order for them to say they called us but it was wrong.”
Ablekuma West Aspirants
The aspirants noted that they raised these issues at the vetting and the committee promised to give the aspirants the original album but three days to the election, it hasn’t been given to them. “We wrote a petition for the extension for the election but there was no response.”
Calm Aggrieved Supporters
Meanwhile, a Political Science Lecturer at the University of Ghana, Dr Kwame Asah-Asante has asked the leadership of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) to calm aggrieved supporters of the party following the agitations that have characterized the internal elections.
Dr. Asah-Asante stated there is the need for the leadership to tell the supporters that it’s just an internal election to elect executives of the party. He added that leadership must try to avoid doing things that the people do not accept because there have been a lot of allegations to the fact that some names have been expunged.
“First of all, the party leadership must be able to say to members whatever way it possible to do so, they have to do that so that they can calm the nerves of people and let them know that it is just internal elections and that the exercise is going to determine the future of the party and they are not prepared to risk that. They should get this message to them.”
Dr. Asah-Asante
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