NPP Manhyia North constituents threaten national executives
Some New Patriotic Party (NPP) polling station executives in the Manhyia North Constituency in the Ashanti Region have vowed to do all within their means, including the use of force, to prevent the compilation of a new constituency register.
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The group, numbering over 100, has also challenged the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the NPP to show to the entire world the so-called Supreme Court ruling the NEC claims to be the basis for the compilation of a new constituency register.
Clad in red attire and armbands and wielding machetes, hammers, scissors, stones and sticks, the group threatened to use all the force at its disposal to ensure that no new register was compiled because it believed that there was a deliberate scheme to ensure that the incumbent Member of Parliament (MP) for the area, Mr Collins Owusu Amankwa, was sidelined.
War songs
Amidst the chanting of war songs, the party officers vowed to crush anyone who would flout a court order, as well as the real issue, to re-run elections to have a new constituency album.
They called the NPP’s attention to three pending legal tussles at the High Court and a Court of Appeal in Kumasi, as well as an interlocutory judgement obtained against the party which did not allow the party to hold any elections now.
At a press conference addressed jointly by the deputy Constituency Secretary, Ms Patricia Arthur, and the Constituency Secretary, Mr Felix Ibrahim, the group threatened to “issue contempt proceedings against the other officers of the party if you fail to respect the pending court actions and pursue your unlawful agenda”.
They wondered why the album that had been used to elect the flag bearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, and the Regional Chairman, Mr Bernard Antwi Boasiako, had, all of a sudden, become flawed to warrant a change.
NEC
In a letter dated April 1, 2016 and signed by the acting NPP General Secretary, Mr John Boadu, the NEC of the party said based on the April 9, 2014 Supreme Court ruling, “the NEC has, therefore, taken a decision to re-run all elections in the Manhyia North Constituency, from polling station level to the constituency executive level”.
The directive was issued after seven postponements of the parliamentary primary and the re-run of elections for 197 polling station executive members.
Press conference
Addressing the press conference, Ms Arthur said the only court process that sought to nullify the existing album at Manhyia North was a purported consent judgement entered by the Accra High Court on August 29, 2014 in a suit entitled: “Kwame Owusu Ansah and 2 others”.
She explained that the said consent judgement was presently an action pending before the High Court in Kumasi entitled: “Ibrahim Felix and 7 others versus NPP and 4 others”, with an aspect of it pending before the Court of Appeal in Kumasi.
Ms Arthur said the Supreme Court, on December 3, 2015, struck out as withdrawn an application filed by Anthony Gyamfi Ameyaw to have the group’s suit dismissed on the grounds that the Supreme Court had already determined that issue when the frivolous nature of the said assertion was exposed.
“It is patent from the foregoing that the NPP has no basis whatever to order a re-run of elections in the Manhyia North Constituency and the reliance on a ruling of the Supreme Court was just an attempt to find cover when none existed and to favour some perceived activists or some persons within the helm of affairs,” it added.
