NPP in Disarray in Stronghold

Mr. Danquah Smith, the youthful businessman who deposed, 68 year old eye surgeon Professor Ghartey currently in trouble for assaulting his estranged spouse under embarrassing circumstances, has stamped his authority in the last festering source of dissent, Winneba and Agona East with the installation of an interim management committee to put the party on a war footing for the region which delivered the NPP from certain defeat.

It is not so with the ruling party's stronghold, as major crevices have engulfed key constituencies of Ashanti Region stronghold.

The problems in the party, which have emanated mainly from intra-party scuffles at the constituency levels in a manner reminiscent of events witnessed in many constituencies during the party's parliamentary primaries ahead of the 2004 elections, have already thrown at least, five constituencies in the region into total disarray when the party's national executive have reminded adherents that the 2008 elections would be the toughest.

The NPP has already successfully patched up and readmitted expelled and suspended supporters who embarked on the famous 'skirt and blouse' revolutionary voting strategy where they voted for the President but voted against the parliamentary candidate.

The strategy dreamed up by Mr. Peter Mac Manu has worked almost to perfection as it has won back thousands of NPP supporters who could have been converted by any of the parties that had emerged, or find themselves into the fold of the older known traditional CPP.

The latest constituency to witness the signs of the party's gradual emasculation in the region is Bosome Freho, a constituency in the Amansie East District. Already, Kwabre West, Oforikrom, Bekwai and Atwima Nwabiagya constituencies have been scenes of major intra-party conflicts, which are causing a lot of disaffection in the party.

Significantly, Atwima Nwabiagya is the constituency from which President J. A. Kufuor hails and he once represented as a legislator in the Second Republican Parliament. The Kwabre West constituency, which was the first to record the intra-party fracas, is the seat currently occupied by the Ashanti Regional Minister, 67-year-old lawyer, Mr. Emanuel Asamoah Owusu-Ansah.

Youthful party activists led by those in tertiary educational institutions in the region have started pouring out their effusions over the seeming disintegration of the party in the region.

The Kumasi Polytechnic branch of the Tertiary Students Confederacy (TESCON) of the of the party has already fired, a statement to the regional executive accusing the regional Chairman of the party, Mr. Robert Yaw Amankwaa, of doing very little to help resolve the problems in the party.

Unlike the other constituencies where the battles are featured by two main groups of party combatants within an executive body or one group of executive body challenging the legitimacy of another, the Bosome-Freho case has the Member of Parliament (MP) as a third participant in the raging battle over the legitimacy of the current constituency executives.

The Constituency chairman of the Party, Mr. Yaw Amoah, considered by many as the one who nurtured the party in the area, which used to be a stronghold of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), in the first term of the Fourth Republic, has accused the MP, Mr. Edward Nana Yaw Ofori-Kuragu, of orchestrating schemes aimed at getting him and his group of executives out of office.

Mr. Amoah told The Chronicle in an interview that Ofori-Kuragu unsuccessfully tried to get his own polling station executives elected contrary to party regulations that gives the right of electing polling station officers of the party to constituency executives.

The constituency chairman also told the paper that the MP has failed to live up to expectation as a result of which members of the party in the constituency have become disgruntled with a lot of them threatening to quit the party.

Mr. Amoah further alleged that Mr. Ofori-Kuragu, had collected monies from a number of people in various communities to help them acquire electricity meters but till date most of the people who paid monies to the MP are complaining that they have not realized the results of the payments made and are therefore demanding their monies from the legislator.

In an interview in Parliament House on Wednesday morning, Mr. Ofori-Kuragu rebuffed all the claims made against him by the constituency Chairman. He described the allegations as baseless and a calculated attempt to tarnish his reputation.

He said he had no recognition for the current group of people "who are calling themselves constituency executives saying because no proper elections were held to elect them, 'so for me, I don't know them as party executives."

He however admitted that it was the people he claimed not to know who represented the constituency in the last delegates' congress of the party during which the current national executives of the party were elected.

"There are two main group of executives at the constituency made up of the new one and the old one. The old group has even taken legal action against the new group challenging their election as constituency executives. I don't want to take sides but I don't recognize the new executives because they were not those who selected me as the party's candidate," the 43-year-old MP emphasized.

All the intra-party confrontations in the constituencies are said to be issues pending settlement by the national executive body of the party. The Bosome Freho legislator disclosed that because the resolution of the problem in the constituency by the national leadership of the party was delaying, a group in the old executives of the party had decided to institute a legal action seeking the removal of the present executives.

Mr. Lord Commey, National Organizer of the party acknowledged the problems in the constituencies mentioned. He told The Chronicle in an interview that the problems at Bosome-Freho, Atwima Nwabiagya and Bekwei were currently before the law courts.

The NPP organizer said, at one point all petitioners were advised to withdraw the cases from court so that the national executive body could help resolve that matter but the call did not get the desired results.

"I know for sure that the National Chairman, Mr. Mac Manu, had been to Bosome-Freho and Atwima Nwabiagya on several occasions to help resolve the problems but the problems still exist. I want to however assure everyone that we are on top of the situation and we would definitely find a solution to the problems," Mr. Commey said.

On the issue of Kwabre West where a supposed vote of no confidence was passed on the Constituency Chairman and five other executives, Mr. Commey said, "the matter was discussed at a steering committee meeting last Wednesday and we hope to discuss it again this Wednesday. Though a vote of no confidence can be passed, there are procedures to be followed in doing that so we are still investigating the matter."