Division emerges in Jomoro NDC

Chances are that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) party could lose the Jomoro Constituency Parliamentary seat, which it currently occupies, if the Western regional executives of the party do not swiftly move to stop an aggrieved member of the party from carrying out his threat to contest the seat as an Independent candidate.

Information available to this paper indicates that moves by the aggrieved NDC member, Mr. Leo Kofi Armah Amenlemah, who contested the last NDC primary but lost, has the full backing of majority of the youth in the party, who have welcomed the move for the aspirant to contest the seat as an Independent candidate.

The fear of the NDC is that it might lose the seat if it is unable to calm down the aggrieved member to back down on his threat to contest as an Independent candidate.

For now, the fear of the NDC party losing the seat has been heightened by the fact that the daughter of Kwame Nkrumah, Samia Yaaba Nkrumah intends to come back to contest the Jomoro seat on the ticket of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP).

It is on record that Samia Nkrumah snatched the seat from the hands of the NDC in the 2008 general election, when she first appeared on Ghana’s political scene. Sources close to the party have confided in this reporter that the decision by the aggrieved defeated aspirant to contest the Jomoro seat as an independent candidate is borne out of irregularities that occurred during the recent NDC parliamentary primary contest in the Jomoro constituency, which saw one Thomas Yankey emerge as victorious.

The source pointed out that though the aggrieved aspirant appropriately tabled the irregularities before the regional executives of the party, with the hope that the party would address them before the day of the contest, but they failed to do so. However, the regional executives snubbed the aspirant’s genuine grievances and went ahead with the primary.

But speaking in a telephone interview, a Regional Organizer of the party, Mr. Japhet Baidoe could not confirm or deny the threat by the aspirant to contest the seat as an Independent candidate. According to him, the regional executives were unaware the aspirant intended to contest the seat as an independent candidate.

Nonetheless, information available to The Chronicle indicates that Mr. Amenlemah, before the November 21st NDC primary had complained and brought to the attention of the regional executives about the bias manner in which the biometric registration of NDC members were being carried out in the constituency.

He had also complained in his written protest to the NDC regional executives how names of members believed to be his supporters were deleted from the register. He mentioned Half-Assini, Elubo, Jaywaf and Twenene amongst others, as polling stations where about a thousand of his supporters’ names were deliberately deleted from of the register.

The source continued that: ‘This goes to show how the Plight of the people of Jomoro was not a concern to them. The entire register was photocopied for Thomas Yankey, their preferred candidate’.