EC snubs NPP primaries

It has emerged that the Electoral Commission (EC) refused to supervise the parliamentary primaries of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) in some constituencies at the weekend.

The constituencies are Nadowli Kaleo in the Upper West Region and Akontombra in the Western Region, where a candidate went unopposed.

DAILY GUIDE sources indicated that the NPP had been collaborating with the Commission on the organization of the primaries but at the eleventh hour, the EC inexplicably refused to corporate with the party after giving assurances earlier.

NPP Director of Elections, Martin Adjei-Mensah Korsah, confirmed the incident and said they were yet to understand the motive for the EC not supervising the primaries, which formed part of the few constituencies left for the party to field parliamentary candidates for the 2016 general elections.

He said it was the EC that printed the Nadowli Kaloe ballot papers for the party and dispatched them and other voting materials to the regional capital in Wa for onward transfer to the polling station.

According to Mr Adjei-Mensah Korsah, when the delegates converged and all was set, the EC officials did not show up and when telephone calls were placed to the Commission’s regional director, he also directed the party to call Accra.

The NPP man said the party was compelled to engage a local printer in Wa as a last-minute arrangement to be able to reprint the ballot papers before voting could start at about 5pm instead of the usual 7am. The delegates voted for a planning consultant and lecturer, Dr Robinson Dakubo Boybandie, as the party’s parliamentary candidate for the 2016 general elections.

He polled 203 out of the 471 valid votes cast at Nadowli on Saturday.

His closest challenger was business consultant, Elvis Banoe Botaa, who polled 147 votes and Dean in-charge of the Wa campus of the University for Development Studies, Dr. Daniel Bagah, had 117. One ballot was rejected.

Fifty-five-year-old Dr. Robinson Boybandie, aided by walking stick and with his red signature Muslim Taqiya cap, in his victory message thanked the delegates for the confidence reposed in him.

“We are looking forward to 2016 when we are yearning to win power. We need to contribute our quota towards that. We can’t win with a divided house. We have to come together; 2016 is going to be a battle of unity and if we are able to do that we will surpass what we had in 2012,” he added.

At Akontombra, the NPP director of elections said the party telephoned both the regional and district directors of the EC but they all refused to dispatch officers to supervise the election.

He said it was going to be impossible for the NPP to accept responsibility for the cost of the already-printed ballot papers which the EC refused to release for the election.

Meanwhile, the NPP has submitted a copy of the Togolese voter register to the EC as requested.

The register will enable the Commission to probe the allegations of foreigners in the Ghanaian register.

Mr Adjei-Mensah Korsah, in a Facebook post on Friday said, “The New Patriotic Party has today presented to the Electoral Commission of Ghana a request made for the Togolese voter register and another in Ghana where stapled pictures were scanned into the Ghanaian voter register. Though strange a request, we hope this would aid and expedite work on our petition.”