There was near confusion last Sunday at the residence of the Northern Regional Coordinating Council where the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), vetted aspirants for regional positions under the chairmanship of the Party’s General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia.
The timely intervention of armed military personnel called in from the 6 Battalion of Infantry (6BN) saved the situation from degenerating into violence.
Disgruntled supporters of some disqualified aspirants protested the decision by the vetting committee to strike out certain names, accusing them of sabotage. According to the supporters, it was a grand scheme by the vetting committee to favour the old executives and therefore insisted their preferred choices must be allowed into the race or incur their wrath.
In view of similar threats in the past that ended in bloodbath, there were fears the supporters could get more violent and so the military was immediately deployed to the scene and calm was restored to allow the vetting process to continue.
DAILY GUIDE gathered that six out of the 69 aspirants who picked nomination forms to contest for the various positions were disqualified by the vetting committee on the grounds that they did not meet the requirements of the party.
According to deep-throat sources, their disqualifications were borne out of clerical errors, but the committee insisted it was enough ground to halt them from progressing to the next stage of the exercise. The party is however, yet to officially communicate to the aspirants the final results of the vetting, but it was gathered that some of them were told straight in their faces that they had been disqualified.
Meanwhile, the Northern Regional secretariat of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has accused the NDC of gross abuse of power by using state facilities for political activities which inures to the benefit of only the party. It questioned the justification in the use of the Northern Regional Coordinating Council (NRCC) for the vetting exercise, indicating that it was setting bad precedent for other parties that might win power in the future.
In a press release signed by the Regional Secretary, Sule Salifu, the NPP condemned the action and indicated that the NRCC is a state property and not for the NDC, reiterating the fact that it was wrong for the party to use such a facility for political activities, bearing in mind how violent its supporters are.
