Cracks deepen in NPP over campaign spending

Two months before nominations are opened for the NPP presidential primaries and already, the fissures are expanding into major cracks within the ruling party.

The Accra Daily Mail says though the general public does not seem overly impressed by the "football team and reserve" line-up of presidential aspirants already stomping about the playing field, some of the players themselves are beginning to feel the vertigo of what they are describing as an uneven playing field - money wise!

A constituency chairman pleading strict anonymity is reported to have told the Accra Daily Mail recently that "what is going on is just not right."

He claimed that some of the aspirants are engaged in "open bribery" of prospective delegates to the December congress that would elect a presidential candidate for Election 2008.

Rather ominously, he gave the hint for trouble ahead. He said: "We will see if such people can get away with it. We will bring it to the floor of the congress."

According to the paper, that cannot be good news to the party because it would be extremely disruptive and make the 2005 NDC congress at Koforidua child play in comparison. Media reports have suggested that there is excessive spending in cash and kind leading up to the December congress, but the leadership of the party has been studiously silent there.

The constituency chairman who spoke to ADM said he was not alone in his disquiet, but "some of us have seen what is going on and we are not happy." ADM asked: How about collecting the money and goods from the aspirants but at the end of the day voting according to your conscience?

Answer: It is not easy. I may be able to do that. How many others can do that?

It is a very sensitive issue: campaign funding in which if there is no cap, matters can degenerate into profligacy.

An aide to one of the aspirants told ADM that "we are under pressure" because their foot soldiers are taking sidelong glances at the better resourced foot soldiers and sending them hints of possible defection to a better oiled campaign.

All of that, understandably, is creating tensions in the party with people getting ready to do battle, no matter how bloody the outcome may be.

Already smarting from the "resignations" of minister aspirants, with perceptions of "endorsement" raising hackles, now the idea of lavish spending by some of the aspirants even before nominations have been opened may just be too much for the ruling party and it could be leading for either an implosion or explosion - which ever comes first.