We’ve the right to withdraw our ticket from candidates – NDC

A Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress(NDC), Koku Anyidoho has said that the party still reserves the right to withdraw the candidature of newly elected candidates who make reckless statement to bring the party’s image into disrepute.

“The party has the right to discipline” Anyidoho stated, adding that at this level the necessary steps can be taken against any candidate for misconduct, hence one is not safe yet until the EC comes out with a notice of polls and the various candidates receive the endorsement of the Chief scribe of the party.

He was reacting to claims made by the former Deputy Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection Rachel Appoh on her recent claim of vote-buying that characterised the NDC Presidential and Parliamentary in her constituency in an interview with Accra-based Citi FM.

Anyidoho said the fact that one gets the overwhelming endorsement from electorates doesn’t give them the right to be making irresponsible public statement.

The former Deputy Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection on the eve of the NDC primaries raised suspicions of manipulation in the electoral process in her constituency to favour her political opponents.

This, she believes, were schemes by her detractors to cause her downfall in politics.

She, for instance, cited a case where she had to dole out monies to pay electorates before managing to reduce the dissenting votes of NO against President John Dramani Mahama. Her constituents, she added, were generally peeved with the fact that they’ve been denied their share of the national cake in the area for far too long.

Despite the district placing second in the national poverty index, Appoh decried the fact that she’s had to virtually beg for the constituency to be noticed. A case in point she says is the exclusion of the constituency from the the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme.