Agona West NDC youth demonstrate against MCE

Agona Swedru, March 12, GNA - Some 200 members and supporters of the Agona West Constituency branch of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Thursday staged a demonstration against the Municipal Chief Executive, Mr Jacob Felix Obeng-Forson, for what they called "misguided and incompetent leadership."

The demonstrators, wearing red bands on their hands and heads, chanted war songs and marched through the principal streets of the municipality. They held placards some of which read "Obeng-Forson is a disaster", "President Mills, remove him from Office", "Obeng-Forson is sinking Agona West NDC" and "Obeng-Forson is a disgrace to NDC".

They later ended at the office of the Agona West Municipal Assembly to present a petition to be sent to the President but armed police personnel prevented them from entering the offices of the assembly for fear of destroying government property. The demonstrators later presented their petition to Mr Leonard Mensah, Chief Personnel Officer, since Mr Obeng-Forson and the Municipal Co-ordinating Director were absent.

In the petition the demonstrators labelled Mr Obeng-Forson "as greedy and corrupt" and that "if nothing is done about this immediately, most members and even floating voters will shy away from the party in the 2012 election."

The demonstrators accused him of succeeding in "balkanizing the Agona West NDC into antagonizing factions of monkey-dey-work-baboon-dey-chop sycophantic and bootlicking minority on one side and disillusioned and suffered majority 'foot soldiers' on the other side". The petition alleged that Mr Obeng-Forson left the NDC and joined the Nkawkaw branch of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for all the years that the NDC was in opposition when he was the District Director of National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) at Nkawkaw in the Eastern Region.

The petition claimed he had built a mansion and bought a new Nissan saloon car for his wife and also engaged her as the sole caterer to cook for the Municipal Assembly any time programme is organized. They alleged that Mr Obeng-Forson had employed his three children to the positions of operation manager of the Zoom Lion and Waste Management and Urban Guard and had abandoned foot soldiers of the party who toiled for the success of the NDC. The demonstrators appealed to President Mills to terminate the appointment of Mr Obeng-Forson to help prepare better grounds for NDC to win the election in 2012. In a telephone interview with Ghana News Agency, Mr Obeng-Forson described the allegations as unfounded, baseless and calculated attempt to destroy his image.