<<Print>>Every four (4) years, the NPP goes to the polls to select various officers and leaders from the polling stations to the party’s top hierarchy.
This exercise normally begins with opening nominations to various aspirants who are eligible party members.
This year's exercise started from February, 2022 to the first week of March, 2022 due to the expiration of the tenure of office of the various polling station and electoral area coordinators.
Irregularities and uncertainties characterised the conduct of the elections.
Aspirants picked and submitted their forms waiting for the elections committee to come out with a timetable for the conduct of the polls but that didn't happen.
The election committee tasked with preparing and releasing the timetable remained adamant.
Instead, Mr Bernard Ayebeng, the elections officer, went ahead with the elections process and had people acclaimed clandestinely in over 20 polling stations without the approval of the committee's Chairperson.
He carried out this exercise before the committee Chairperson said the election would commence.
The official timetable for the election has not been released to date.
What was more dangerous about the election officers’ activities was that they turned down calls by the committee's Chairperson to halt their activities until a proper timetable was ready.
Several calls were made to the regional executives about the menace and countless petitions but they all yielded no results.
The aspirants who were law-abiding took the matter to the Cape Coast Circuit and sought an injunction on the conduct of elections in the Hemang Lower Denkyira Constituency.
The court, after proper scrutiny, granted the injunction on 17th March 2022.
This decision to take the matter to court was timely and necessary since most aspirants who had been denied the right to vote were planning to resort to violence but the decision of the court brought relief to them.
The court also recommended that the committee discontinues the election.
Copies of the court verdict and other petitions were sent to the national executives who immediately set up a mediation committee, under the chairmanship of Hon. Cecilia Abena Dapaah, to begin the process of mediation in all disputes regarding the polling station and electoral area coordinators elections.
The committee report intercepted by the media we have in our possession copies gave the following recommendations; that elections be conducted in all the eighty-one (81) polling stations that did not have elections, the party members who picked up and submitted nominations forms will be the only persons eligible to contest in the elections.
For this decision, all the polling stations aspirants are very grateful to Hon. Cecilia Abena Dapaah and her team for an impeccable job done.
They have given the aspirants a reason to unite and break eight (8).
The report also captures the Regional party's view.
According to the report, the Regional executives said a re-run of the elections in the eighty (81) would create upheavals and therefore recommend a re-run in nine polling stations where the committee chairperson nullified and also the polling station of the twenty-one (21) plaintiffs who went to court totalling six (6) polling stations.
Hon. Cecilia Dapaah Committee, after listening to the Regional executives, overruled the decision by the Region and recommended a re-run of the polling station executives’ elections in 81 polling stations.
The Regional party even had it wrong.
These twenty plaintiffs are from more than ten polling stations, so the aspirants do not know how Regional executives arrived at six since none of the Regional executives even sat down to hear them.
The 21 also went to court on behalf of all the aspirants of the 81 polling stations and therefore, the Regional executives cannot satisfy them without considering others who were not part of the 21 but signed the petition to the National Executive Committee.
The aspirants are also happy with Hon. Cecilia Abena Dapaah's Committee recommendation to dissolute the Hemang Lower Denkyira Constituency polling station and electoral area coordinators elections committee and the reconstitution of a new committee to supervise future elections.
For this, the aspirants are grateful to Hon. Abena Dapaah's Committee.
The aspirants are also aware that the Committee will present her report to the National Executives Committee from tomorrow.
They, therefore, appeal to NEC not to allow any party or political figure who may want to influence the Committee's report to suit anyone.
Breaking the eight (8) begins with responding smoothly to the plight of the YOUTH, like Hon. Dapaah has done.
By this, the dream of the New Patriotic Party in breaking the eight (8) will become a fetus that will be born soon.