NPP Defies Antoa Over Manhyia North Polls

THE NEW Patriotic Party (NPP) on Thursday defied curses invoked by an aggrieved party member 24 hours earlier, and elected some polling station executives in the Manhyia North constituency.

One Padmore, said to be a coordinator of the party in the constituency, caused a stir on Wednesday as he held bottles of Schnapps and openly used the dreaded Antoa Nyamaa river deity to invoke curses on the party.

Padmore said he was not happy about how some party executives in the Ashanti Region were handling the impending Manhyia North constituency parliamentary primary hence, his decision to invoke the curses.

Political watchers and NPP supporters thought that Padmore’s invocation of curses would put fear in the regional executives and defer the election of 197 polling station executives for the constituency.

But that was not the case because Bernard Antwi Boasiako, popularly called Wontumi, the Ashanti Regional NPP Chairman, who was bent on holding the elections on Thursday, was not scared by the action.

“Whether there is a curse or no curse, the Manhyia North constituency polling station elections are taking place today,” the NPP capo, who was brimming with confidence, told Daily Guide on telephone Thursday morning.

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He stated emphatically that the Ashanti Regional NPP was battle ready to garner 90 percent of votes to be cast in the region on November 7 to enhance the chance of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the party’s standard bearer, becoming Ghana’s next president, “and nothing is stopping us.”

Meanwhile, the Manhyia North elections were said to have been held in a peaceful atmosphere at all the centres except Moshie Zongo where some stoutly-built (‘macho’) men reportedly tried to disrupt the polls.

Some angry-looking machomen reportedly manhandled a journalist who tried taking shots of what was transpiring but the police were quickly called in to enforce law and order.

At the time of filing this report, the NPP was yet to complete the election of the 194 polling station executives, who by their election would have voting rights when the party organizes its primary to elect its parliamentary candidate for the constituency towards this year’s general election.

In a related development, scores of supposed NPP troublemakers at Manhyia North were given a sound beating by stoutly-built men who were guiding the party’s regional office at Krofrom when they (troublemakers) stormed the office to vandalize it on Tuesday.