PNC discloses why only 36 members filed for parliamentary seats

David Apasera, the flagbearer of the People’s National Convention, has attributed the party’s inability to allow more of its members to contest for parliamentary seat in the 2020 elections to the high cost of filing fees imposed by the Electoral Commission.

At the end of the filing of nominations on Friday, October 9, 2020, only thirty-six parliamentary candidates filed on the ticket of the PNC.

Speaking to Citi News, David Apasera said that the party initially planned on allowing 100 members to contest for various parliamentary seats but were put off by the filing fee.

He noted that the party had to settle on the thirty-six members it is convinced will win their seats.

“Certainly, we had problems with money. We wanted to file as many as 100 parliamentary candidates, but we couldn’t because we were not able to raise that money. So we got 36 parliamentary aspirants. We had the same problem as the other parties.”

David Asapera also complained some infractions in the voters register and called on the EC to correct them before December 7.

“We have a soft copy of the register that they have compiled and when you want to compare, you will get to see that the code is wrong. So I think that the Electoral Commission must do a clean-up or correction”, he indicated.

This year, parliamentary aspirants were made to pay GH¢10,000 for filing fees while that of presidential aspirants was pegged at GH¢100,000.

The PNC was among a number of a smaller fees that protested the ‘outrageous’ filing fee demand by the EC.

The party argued on several platforms that the EC was selling leadership to the highest bidder with its exorbitant fees.