Ghana’s main opposition national Democratic Congress (NDC) will tomorrow Thursday hold its delegate congress to elect a presidential candidate for next year’s general elections. About three hundred and fifty international and local observers have been invited to monitor the elections at the congress. The party said the presence of the observers would give credence to its promise to adhere to international democratic values.
Kwabena Adjei is the chairman of the (NDC). He said the party is growing stronger, especially with multiple presidential aspirants.
“This year we have four candidates and we’ve given them guidelines as to how to go about their various campaigns prior to the congress on Thursday…. We have established an inter-aspirants committee to try to ensure that internally the NDC has as little problem as possible,” he said.
Adjei said the party recently brought the four presidential hopefuls together to talk to members of the party; something he said was unheard of in the party.
“We held a family meeting last Tuesday where we introduced our candidate to the electorate. They came and talked to the people not in a debate form but each one of them tried to state clearly what their visions and missions are as they relate to the party’s vision and political philosophy. After that there was a rally and everything went well,” Adjei noted.
He said though the party has had a checkered past, plans are afoot to change the negative perception of the party.
“We are a growing organization and initially we had to manage the party and our membership. So we are gradually democratizing. So we have taken advantage of various criticisms from other political parties, from the media and so on. But in doing that, we have not allowed ourselves to be dictated to until the time has come when we think that we must do the right thing and that is what we are doing,” he said.
Adjei said any of the presidential hopefuls are capable of wrestling power from the ruling New Patriotic party (NPP).
“Sure, who ever emerges, we the NDC and the structure that we have put in place would be mobilized fully for that person to wrestle power from the NPP. Resource or no resource we will wrestle that power,” he said.
Adjei accused the ruling party of trying to create a bad image for the NDC. But he said the party has taken precaution to prevent that.
“We have put our security on the ground based on the intelligence we have gathered from the grounds about what the NPP wants to do again in order to consolidate the labeling that we are a violent and an eternally undemocratic party. It won’t happen this time,” Adjei said.
Source: GhanaWeb
