"NPP Will Not Concede 45 Seats To NDC"

The National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, has stated that the main opposition �will not sit down and concede 45 seats to the NDC [National Democratic Congress] no matter what they hope to make from them.� Parliament will on Tuesday probably pass into law the Constitutional Instrument 78 which seeks to re-demarcate some constituencies to create additional 45. This follows weeks of debates and calls by the Minority in Parliament and other civil society groups calling for the suspension of the re-demarcation, saying it had the tendency of causing problems during the December polls. The Minority legislators also argued that some Ghanaians could be disenfranchised if the Instrument is passed into law. Speaking on the Citi Eyewitness News on Monday, Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey mentioned that the NPP will make �damn sure that they [NDC] don�t get what they want to get from them [the 45 new constituencies] and that we will do, Isha Allah.� According to him, his party will take the necessary steps to prepare to field candidates in the new constituencies �for the time that the Electoral Commissioner says that the candidates must file their nominations, so we will meet that date.� The NPP stalwart, however, bemoaned the insistence of the Electoral Commission and the ruling NDC to create the 45 new constituencies saying, �this whole business of because you are now in government and therefore you have the power to create districts any how you like. Whether there are laws to create it or not, you don�t mind. That can be abused for generations to come and that leads to the further abuse of what we are seeing now.� �The whole idea of Parliament is that you try to do best practices and you try to lay down a whole level of best practices that act as precedence. You don�t put down bad practices. Why do we have to do certain things that are obvious by themselves as unnecessary and not necessary to do it into law? If the thing is wrong, it is wrong,� he opined. But the General Secretary of the ruling NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has endorsed Parliament�s decision to uphold the re-demarcation of the constituencies saying, �I am happy that at the end of the day, Parliament has granted the Electoral Commission the right to create these constituencies and I am happy that the Constitution has been obeyed.� He, however, denied that the NDC was bent on ensuring the creation of the constituencies for gerrymandering purposes. �This is an issue of a constitutional body discharging its obligations so if any party or any member is happy to insist that the constitutional body is granted the rights so to do, that party is interested in sustaining our democracy and that�s about it. It has nothing to do with prospects in elections,� Mr. Nketia said.