Obed Asamoah Blames NDC Members

The National Chairman of National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr. Yao Obed Asamoah, has said that the socio-economic trauma Ghanaians were experiencing now is a attributable to some NDC faithful?s failure to vote massively for the party during the 2000 elections.

He added that the NDC failed in the 2000 elections due to the party?s massive loss of about 1.2 million followers which has landed Ghanaians into the present economic state which he describes as ?worse off than ever?.

According to him the New Patriotic Party added only 300 thousand votes to its 1996 total vote count and asked where the rest of the lost NDC faithful were, assuming all the 300 thousand joined the NPP.

Dr. Asamoah said the NDC recorded a popular vote of 62 per cent in the Brong Ahafo Region in the 1996 elections but the figure declined to 42 percent in 2000. He expressed worry about the drastic drop in the party?s parliamentary seats in the region from 17 to only seven.

The NDC chairman therefore called on the party?s followers and potential sympathisers to be involved when the Electoral Commission opened the new voters register and get their names registered. He advised them not to be only vigilant against double registration but also registration of minors.

Dr. Asamoah believed that the NPP could only retain power through fraud and irregularities in the forthcoming elections. He said the NPP has no popular tradition in the annals of the country?s political history, and that it won power in 1969 and 2000 through intimidation and harassment of its political opponents and deceit.

The National Organiser and MP for Fanteakwa-Begoro constituency, Mr. Ofosu Ampofo, labeled the NPP?s three-year administration as ?wasted effort and time.? He continued that if the NDC had been allowed to proceed with its implementable and sensitive policies, Ghana would have turned paradise by now.