All failed presidential and parliamentary aspirants who intend to go independent after the New Patriotic Party primaries have been warned about any such attempts ahead of the event scheduled for November 4, 2023.
The party notes that all aspirants, by signing an undertaking to support the eventual winner in the primaries have pledged and committed themselves and must stay true to that.
Haruna Mohammed, Deputy General Secretary of the NPP said that the party has already existing rules that ensure that candidates who lose elections cannot contest as independent candidates and there are sanctions that will be applied if any aspirant breaks such rules.
Speaking to Joynews, Mr. Mohammed said;
““These rules are designed before we open nominations so at the time of designing these rules, there was no aspirant and there was no way we could consult a non-existing aspirant.”
“This is a rule that the party has set, and if you know that when you lose you’ll contest as independent then you don’t pick the form or you don’t return the form, you wait until it’s time for independents to contest.”
“The sanctions are inside the rules, if you go against it, we will take you on because this is an agreement you have signed and the party will take the best decision,” he further added.
Meanwhile, Mr. Mohammed indicated that the Fomena constituency has been omitted from the orphan constituencies where the NPP will be selecting parliamentary candidates.
The NPP opened nominations on July 11, 2023, for parliamentary primaries in constituencies where the party has no parliamentary representation ahead of the elections set for September 23.
According to him, the Fomena MP, Andrew Asiamah Amoako does business with the NPP in parliament and therefore will have his constituency treated like those with sitting NPP MPs.
“Everybody knows that Fomena is doing business with us so it has a different way of being treated just like the sitting Members of Parliament.”
“Even though the Fomena MP is an independent one, he’s still doing business with us, he votes with us, he takes decisions with us.”
“The point is, we’re doing for orphans and Fomena is doing business with us in parliament so the same way we don’t open for our sitting Members of Parliament, we would wait till we get there, but Fomena is doing business with us in parliament,” he explained.
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The NPP will hold its elections in the Orphan constituencies from September to December