Ghana’s main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has introduced guidelines for the nomination and election of a presidential candidate for the 2008 elections. The NDC Chairman, Kwabena Adjei, says the guidelines include requirements for prospective candidates to ensure fairness. He added that the NDC is determined to win the 2008 elections.
Adiei spoke with Voice of America English to Africa reporter Peter Clottey about his new guidelines. “For some time now there have been rumors all over the place that the founder may be supporting one candidate against the other. And from the way things are going although so far it has been not bad at all we felt that we should issue out publicly guidelines on the nomination and the election of presidential candidates now. We tried the control of unguided statements, press statements and public pronouncement from our officers our members and so on and so forth.”
Adjei explained the recent resignations from the NDC following his ascension into the chairmanship. “Everything is alright. It takes a few people to give a party or an organization a bad name. And we want to prove that right. These guidelines have not been absent, most of them are provided for in our constitution. But it’s the way the guidelines have been issued in the past or been kept secret from others which led to lots of wranglings which led to what people said happened at the congress. In other words people were frustrated and if you frustrate them sometimes aggression results. So we have taken these steps to make sure that everything is transparent.”
The chairman dispelled rumors that the NDC is facing difficulties due to the increasing popularity of the ruling party. “If anybody tells you that the ruling national patriotic party is popular in Ghana that person should have his head examined. I haven’t seen any government being bashed like that by the electorates. We as their partners have been relatively sympathetic because we’ve been in government before. We know the factors that are under our control and those that are not. But then we use a certain dexterity, political dexterity in handling our situation in the past as a developing country. The corruption is too much; the arrogance is too much, the ostentation is clear, the incompetence, the kind of words that are being hurled at these people let me tell you that every bit of it is true. The Ghanaians are awake; if we didn’t do anything at all we created awareness.”
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