There was a high-speed car chase in Kumasi yesterday involving about ten cars when executives of the Nhyiaso Constituency of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) allegedly played hide and seek with an aspiring parliamentary candidate over the picking of nomination forms to contest for the party’s constituency primary.
According to reports, this followed alleged attempts by the constituency executives to prevent any person apart from Dr. Richard Anane, the incumbent Member of Parliament (MP) from contesting for the seat.
The hitherto calm in the constituency suffered a jolt when Kwame Owusu, a Chartered Accountant and hotelier was said to have been denied access to the party forms by some executives.
Mr. Owusu, who claimed to have ample proof that the incumbent MP and some party executives led by the Constituency Chairman, George Kofi Adjei have mapped out a strategy to prevent him from contesting the seat, had already petitioned the national and regional executives of the party to intervene.
Narrating his frustrations to Daily Guide, Mr. Owusu who is the Chief Executive of Town and Country Plaza Hotels, with nine branches across the country said he made attempts to pick the forms to contest for the seat last Thursday. According to him, he visited the party’s office around 3:00 pm on the said day only to be told that the Constituency Chairman, popularly known as ‘Joe Card’ was mourning his late father-in-law and that the office was not in operation.
He continued that he and his aides trooped to the funeral grounds to mourn with their chairman where he made him aware of his intentions to buy the forms. Mr. Owusu noted that since the following day was Easter Friday which was a holiday, Joe Card told him to come for the forms the next Tuesday, adding that due to some circumstances beyond his control he could not make it on the Tuesday as planned. However, he said he stormed the party office on Wednesday morning to pick the forms only to be told that the Constituency Chairman had traveled to Accra, a development he found palpable. To confirm his doubt, Mr. Owusu called Joe Card on phone and asked for the forms, but the Chairman who claimed to be in Accra directed him to the Constituency Secretary, one Dominic Agyeman Pambour who he said was holding them.
Mr. Owusu said he called Pambour on phone, but he also replied that he was at Ofankor heading to Accra so he should come for the forms at a later date. Minutes after talking to Pambour on phone, Mr. Owusu said someone alerted him that the Constituency Secretary was in town and was rather playing hide and seek with him to prevent him from laying his hands on the party’s forms. At this juncture, he said he phoned the Regional Chairman of the party, Yaw Amankwa and briefed him on the whole incident, adding that Mr. Amankwa then called Pambour on phone, and again, he said was on his way to Accra. The Chartered Accountant, who now sensed some sort of foul play, rushed to Pambour’s house only for his wife to confirm that indeed her husband was in Kumasi, shopping in town, and not in Accra as claimed.
Upon getting this information, Mr. Owusu dispatched about 10 cars to track Pambour. Luckily, they sighted him driving a Nissan Patrol pickup vehicle around the Golden Tulip City Hotel area and gave him a hot chase until they cornered him in front of his house. Continuing, Mr. Owusu said after trapping Pambour, he asked for the forms but Pambour who seemed adamant, grabbed the car keys and fled from the scene, abandoning his car and mobile phone. To buttress his claim that some constituency executives led by the Chairman were on a diabolical mission to prevent him from buying the forms, Mr. Owusu said he towed the abandoned car to the party’s regional office at Bantama as evidence.
Mr. Owusu, who claims to have ample proof that the Constituency Chairman and Secretary were being manipulated against his vying for the seat, had thus petitioned the national and regional executives of the party to relieve the constituency officials of their posts for being openly biased towards Dr. Anane.
“Dr. Anane has met them at a meeting aimed at implementing a scheme to prevent me from getting the forms,” he alleged.
The Chartered Accountant, who looked unperturbed by the untoward actions of Joe Card and Pambour, vowed to wrestle the seat from Dr. Anane who he described as a failed MP. As MP, Mr. Owusu promised to be accommodative, and stressed that he would visit his constituents every three months in order to know their problems so as to address them adequately. In a related development, all attempts by Daily Guide to get Joe Card’s side of the story proved futile as he refused to pick his phone. The paper had also not been able to get in touch with Pambour since he fled.
