The Deputy General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Obiri Boahene, has stated that the injunction on the Fomena delegates election is quite unfortunate.
Nana Obiri Boahen speaking about the next course of action averred that, such a decision lies with the director of elections because he “holds the keys to lock and unlock the door” to Fomena’s elections. “It’s quite unfortunate. There’s been a number of cases in the court. I think last Tuesday we had about 3 cases in the high court in Kumasi.”
Touching on the suspension of the election in the Yendi, Nandom and Salvelugu as well, the Deputy General Secretary indicated that the party’s structures, which is the constituency, the regional and the National Executive will come together to address the issue.
“Because one body cannot take a decision without an input from the other bodies. The constituency cannot single handedly take a decision, regional and NEC cannot single handedly take a decision, so is the National Council.”
Nana Obiri Boahene
Nana Obiri Boahen commenting on the outcome of the first day of the delegates elections stated that the party will go back to its “drawing board” to address certain issues.
“I feel very uncomfortable when personally I am being called upon to express my personal opinion on some of these things. Prior to this, I did say that the sale of the form should not be done manually but online. Most of these cases in the court emerged out of the sale of forms manually at the polling stations.”
Nana Obiri Boahene
Mr. Boahen, however, questioned how the NPP could have sold the forms manually at some places when it is an advocate for digitization. He averred that the violence link to the sale of forms manually had toned down after the party introduced the sale of forms online at certain constituencies.
“We should have adopted this strategy right from the word go. It will be online, people will pay for the forms, then you do the selection and then you compile the album. Any contestant must be given a copy of the album then they will cross check names which did not appear correctly, photographs which did not appear, those who have relocated and then people will have the opportunity to go through the album before you go ahead to conduct the elections.”
Nana Obiri Boahene
Leadership to address challenges
Meanwhile, the Director of Communications for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Yaw Buaben Asamoa, has intimated that the leadership of the party will definitely address all the challenges that have characterized the internal elections so far. He said the issues that were witnessed on day one of the exercise were expected given that the elections are being conducted on a large scale across the country at the same.
“The way we are trying to engage across the country, there will definitely be a few hitches here and there on the first day. So, I think we will overcome any initial difficulties. We have five days within which every constituency is supposed to have voted, so today will be a very valuable lesson learning curve.”
Yaw Buaben Asamoa
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