Stop embarrassing your own candidate – Moshake

Stephen Ashitey Adjei, an Executive Member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in Tema East, has chided his party members for impatience exhibited against their Parliamentary candidate.

“They say that since he was elected as our Parliamentary Candidate, he has been sojourning in the US without any indication that he will start any campaign soon for his election and so he should be changed as our Parliamentary Candidate. But I think this is seriously in bad taste; we have at least ten months more to go for the 2020 election so why the haste?

“These people forget that in 2012, we were just four months to election when our Presidential Candidate, Prof. Mills died, but within those few months, John Mahama became candidate and successfully campaigned to win the election,” Moshake said.

In a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra, Mr Adjei popularly called Moshake, denounced calls for Isaac Ashai Odamtten, the PC, to be changed because according to those making calls, the man has not been around to prosecute his campaign.

According to him, the Mahama example should have been a precedent for people who want Isaac Ashai Odamtten removed as PC because he has not started his campaign early.

Some of the people asking for Odamtten, a former MCE of Tema, to be changed, have written to the party executives to express their request.

They make the point that after Mr Odamtten was elected PC last year, he returned to his base in the US, where he is said to be schooling and has therefore since lost touch.

It is the fear of these that Mr Odamtten’s divided attention would cost any campaign that the party would run for the Tema East seat and have therefore requested that he should be replaced.

Others too have alleged that an investigation that has been opened into his tenure as the MCE of Tema by the Economic and Organized Crimes Office (EOCO) is what scared him into running away to hide in the US.

However, according to Moshake, those making this particular allegation are embarrassing the party and giving campaign ammunition to their opponents in the NPP.

“It is not true that Mr Odamtten has run away from an EOCO investigation, long before that investigation would start, he was in the United States schooling, and so those making these allegations are only arming our opponents with ammunition to use against our own candidate when the campaign swings into full gear.

“Contrary to the fears of Odamtten’s detractors that he does not have a campaign plan in place, he does and that he is only gathering funds in the US for the purpose of the campaign, washing our dirty linen in public is a violation of the party’s constitution, something which should be borne in mind,” Moshake concluded.