The Majority Leader and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has refuted allegations that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) leadership deliberately hatched a plan to undermine one of the party’s flagbearer hopefuls, Alan Kyerematen, at their final rally for the Assin North by-election.
Many members of the NPP have berated the party’s leadership for allowing Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia to ‘gate-crash’ the speech of Alan Kyerematen at the rally.
They accused the leadership of using the Assin North rally to project Vice President Bawumia’s presidential admission while undermining Alan and the other presidential hopefuls.
But Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Suame, has said that there was no plan to undermine Alan.
According to him, the vice president was made to pass through the crowd at the rally so that he would get to the platform mounted for the dignitaries first before the president.
“The president and the vice president were coming together and protocol-wise the president must be the last to arrive at any programme – the chief of staff arrives, then the vice president follows and the last person to arrive would be the president.
“So, what happened was that because they got to the venue at the same time, the vice president was forced to pass through the crowd so that he would reach the podium first before the president gets there.
“That exactly is what happened… and so if someone says it was planned, I disagree,” he said in Twi in a Pure FM interview, which was monitored by GhanaWeb.
The MP said that NPP members who are saying that the incident was planned, including the MP for Assin Central, Kennedy Agyapong and former NPP Communication Director, Yaw Buaben Asamoa, are blowing the matter out of proportion and are creating needless tension in the party.
Watch Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu’s remarks in the video below from (42:00):
You can also watch this episode of People & Places here:
