NDC race: Tema Central is mine despite smear campaign – Ebi Bright

Actress Ebi Bright has said she will win the main opposition National Democratic Congress’ Tema Central constituency race to represent the party in the 2020 general elections in spite of the challenges facing her campaign team.

The party has scheduled the polls for Saturday, 24 August 2019.

In a statement, Ms Bright’s campaign team said she is not distracted by attempts by her opponents to undermine and thwart her efforts.

“The Ebi Bright Campaign is not distracted by desperate attempts to undermine its candidate or to take away her victory on 24th August. This communication comes in the wake of media attacks on her person and her campaign with trumped-up allegations and propaganda with the aim of benefiting a particular candidate.

“We are focused and cannot afford to be distracted at this time by people who have no practical and deliverable message or programmes for strengthening and rebuilding the grassroots and structures of the party and its branches in Tema Central.

“The focus of our campaign is not only on an internal battle for whom wins the NDC parliamentary candidacy but rather who best understands and represents the dynamics of the entire constituency and is best suited to articulate the myriad complex needs of Tema Central by giving them a voice in parliament,” the statement said.

It added: “It would be recalled that soon after her approval by the party’s Vetting Committee in Accra, our 2016 aspirant said in her own words: ‘It is now time to build and sustain improved party structures to properly engage our constituents and allow more interactions between our leadership and the grassroots’.

“This is exactly what is currently unfolding in the constituency as she is currently making good her promise to re-energise and empower the branches with targeted and essential infrastructural and logistics support of an initial ten (10) chairs per branch for meetings. It is in continuation of a project she first initiated in 2016 by supporting the NDC constituency office with forty (40) chairs and three (3) branches with twenty (20) chairs each.

“The rollout of chairs for the branches cannot wait because the battle with our political opponents, the NPP, is not waiting on our primaries but is already in full gear. It amounts to political naivety and folly, if not suicide, to tag this selfless effort at rejuvenating the party structures and grassroots at the branches as ‘political expediency’.

“The rationale for delivering this promise at this time is solely an issue of party welfare because poorly-funded party structures and branches have had to rely on individual pockets to rent chairs and canopies for party events and meetings. It is in this regard that candidate Ebi Bright made her well-considered and thought-through decision to deliver at this time.

“We are aware of how this could be misconstrued and twisted for political gain with several malicious rumours even about the source of the chairs, but our well-informed and astute constituents know best where the shoe pinches and we have no wish to second-guess them. Again, we trust the discerning members of the party and the voting delegates to see through the crude propaganda as the last-ditch attempts of a dying horse.”