Fight for Anlo Constituency continues

HE race for the Anlo Constituency seat in this year’s general elections has assumed a complex dimension, following the declaration of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr James Gbeho, who lost the party’s nomination to Squadron Leader Clend M. K. Sowu, to contest the seat as an Independent candidate.

According to a statement issued by Mr Gbeho, his intention to contest the next parliamentary election as an independent candidate is to enhance the development of the constituency and also to prevent the party from losing the seat.

“I deeply regret my supporters and I have been forced into this situation by such unpleasant aspects of the process,” he said.

The Foreign Minister praised the NDC for its efforts to restructure the country’s economy ,” but added that he could not accept the silencing of voices in the Anlo Constituency in such a peremptory manner,”

“For this reason, I will continue to urge my supporters to vote for Professor John Atta Mills for the post of President, but, in the matter of the Anlo constituency, in particular, to vote as their conscience tells them in this hour,” he added.

Mr Gbeho accused the NDC for its lack of transparency in the nomination process regarding the selection of a parliamentary candidate for the Anlo constituency which he claimed has prejudiced the choice in the eyes of those on whose behalf the party had sought to act.

He said it was a matter of great dismay to the people of the constituency and him “when on the evening of Tuesday, 12 September, our attention was drawn to the news item by some part of the media that Squadron Leader C.K. Sowu had been nominated by the NDC as its choice for the Anlo parliamentary seat for the December 2000 elections.”

“I wish to state for the record therefore that since the news of the decision broke, Chiefs, opinion leaders and my supporters in the Anlo constituency have been in contact with me and still maintain that I should represent them,” Mr Gbeho said.

“In order not to betray their trust and confidence, I have decided to stand in the coming elections as an independent candidate to save the constituency,” he added

Messrs Gbeho and Sowu who are all leading functionaries of the party have during the last few months engaged in a bitter struggle to contest on the ticket of the NDC in the parliamentary election but it was Mr Sowu who in the long run, was endorsed as the party’s candidate.

This ominous development, which pits two top notches of the NDC in the forthcoming parliamentary election is not likely to be in the supreme interest of the party in its bid to maintain its majority posture in the next parliament.