More controversy looms as flagbearer aspirants particularly continue to question the drive behind the stated 420,000 filing fees being charged all persons vying to lead the party in the 2020 polls.
Most recent to have added his voice is Presidential hopeful and Former Trade Minister, Ekwow Spio-Garbrah.
His perturbation has to do with the fact that the party appears to be mimicking their opponents as far as issues of monetary importance are concerned.
Rather than heed to the constant advice being propagated by party Founder, Jerry John Rawlings; that the party should desist imitating others and stick solely to their core values to avoid encouraging corruption, Mr. Spio-Garbrah argues that the party may be following in the stead of their opponents the NPP where monetization comes first before values and ideologies.
“The matter goes to the heart and soul, yes, shall we be a mass party, where monecracy, monetization and ‘sikadiciousness’ does not become the criterion by which we make our decisions, or shall we just try to be like the NPP where choppocratic and crytocracy in the past have been become part of their behavioral pattern”, he quizzed while making his submission on Joy News’ ‘PM Express’ show Monday.
He continued, “The idea simply is that, this is a party which began out of a revolutionary process, where some people actually died, generals were shot, for borrowing 50,000 cedis to build houses. President Rawlings used to remind us those of us who were Ministers and in his cabinet, that the NDC, we have blood on the hands of many people and we have to be very different in the way we approach things. When we were about to launch our campaign for 2016 in Cape Coast, at the sports stadium, he came and said, NDC look, you are different people from the NPP, don’t try to imitate and mimic that party because you are not going to make it, go back to your core values, let people see you as a different party”.
Mr. Spio-Garbrah is even more surprised about the defence the party is putting up for charging such a huge amount. He wonders how that executives at the party headquarters put in close to zero efforts to raise funds to support the party in the upcoming elections and yet are ‘forcibly’ putting all the weight on the ‘heads’ of persons who wish to lead the party.
“What has the party headquarters itself done that is not a fundraising for the whole of this year or for the 18 months since we lost elections. Since we lost elections, some of the executives are from 5 years ago, 10 years ago, etc. so we should have seen from them as chief executives of the party, strategies for recovering the party”
“It’s not a matter of whether we have that money or we can raise that money, that’s not the issue, should that be the basis and the determinant for a mass party or congress or should it be other criteria? Are we testing our ideas, our creativity, our problem solving skills or are we just finding out who can pay most and if you can pay most, then you become the flagbearer, that I think is where the matter is being raised that yes, the party needs money….You don’t ask someone who is potentially going to be the new MD that you alone should recover the organisation when there are about 2000 others sitting for months not apparently doing much”, he stated.
NDC losing values
According to Mr. Spio-Garbrah, the NDC is losing its values basically because of the shift of focus from ideas and values to money as an influencing factor to head or lead in any capacity in the party.
“Some people in the NDC are making it lose its values not the mass of the NDC but increasingly, there’s a tendency to feel that if you going to have an election, you must be able to buy votes, television sets, bring microwave, or do something and not listen to the ideas of the person.”
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