Our delegates are not dumb, NPP can’t influence them – Asiedu Nketia

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has rubbished any possibility of their recently held Parliamentary Primaries being influenced by the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) as alleged by the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the party, Wontumi.

Bernard Antwi Boasiako, popularly known as Chairman Wontumi, in an interview with Kumasi based Hello FM claimed his party meddled in the National Democratic Congress (NDC) primaries held in August this year.

Allegations of vote-buying were associated with the just ended primaries of the largest opposition party in the country. Some aspirants who lost out in the contest accused their opponents of paying off delegates to vote against them.

It’s on the back of this claim that the NPP’s Ashanti Regional Chairman alleged that some elements in his party, the NPP, had deliberately infiltrated the NDC and doled out cash to delegates to vote against some aspiring and incumbent legislators.

“There are a lot of strategies that we have. Some of them require that you meet delegates, others demand that you meet some leaders and give them the money and they will distribute it to the right people. The Bible even says that money answers all things…In fact, the money works in politics so that is one strategy” Chairman Wontumi is alleged to have said after the defeat of Ras Mubarak in the NDC primaries.

Though the NPP’s Director of Communications, Yaw Buaben Asamoah has distanced the party from the comments of its Ashanti Regional Chair, many believe the claim to be true.

But speaking in an interview on JoyNews, the General Secretary of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia described as laughable, the claims by Bernard Antwi Boasiako.

He insists stated that for anyone to suggest their activity was infiltrated means the delegates who engaged in the said exercise(electing candidates) are daft and not focused.

“You see when you’re talking about politics you talk about levels. The level at which Wontumi operates that’s not the level I operate. The level where he does his communication, the type of things he considers to be things that he should be talking about that’s not what I will be talking about, we are operating at different levels. His might be higher than mine, mine might be higher than his but we are operating at different levels. I don’t engage the press based on what Wontumi has said or what he has not said, but I’m saying that it is not possible for Wontumi or any other person to infiltrate our ranks because if you say so, it will mean that our people are so daft that they don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t know what they’re about in selecting a candidate.

It’s not possible because our delegates are not selected on the voting day. We begin selecting our delegates from the time we conduct branch elections so if you take our constitution, you’ll see that the branch executives constitute the bulk of the electoral college and then you add constituency executives and you add former DCE’s former MPs, those are special voters, so these are the people who constitute our delegates so I’m wondering whether the NPP will present people to come and influence our voting” he stated.

Meanwhile, Mr Asiedu Nketia stated that there will be no point for his party to carry out any form of investigation into the supposed infiltration, stating that the NPP Chairman was “just blowing his mouth, sort of. He has no capacity to influence anything in our party”