Party Register Hijacked Ahead of Membership Registration

The Tema East Constituency Second Vice Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) says the Constituency Chairman and the Member of Parliament (MP) for the area have hijacked the party’s register ahead of the registration of party members.

“The duty of the executives is to go down to the polling stations and register every member of the party. That is the aim of updating the polling station register. The order is not for the MP and his chairman to hide the register and undergo selective update of the register,” he said.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Tema, Mr. Jonathan Tetteh Anna alleged that Mr. Daniel Titus Glover, MP for Tema East, had said in the open that “Mr. Tetteh and some members of the Tema East NPP executives were not availing themselves for the work of the party because they opposed him during the 2016 general elections.”

Mr. Tetteh, in refuting the allegation, asked Mr Titus-Glover to make the polling station register available adding that, “It is for the polling station chairman and executives to go round their areas and register true members of the party.”

He observed that the agenda of the MP was to sideline some members of the party to boast his chances of winning the NPP primaries.

He said, “I believe in a level playing field. If he thinks he is a good candidate, he should make everything available for a clean election, hinting that “he had hijacked the register because he was afraid of the contest.”

Reacting to the accusations, Mr. Titus-Glover said the Second Vice Chairman and his supporters refused to attend the meeting called by the Chairman to deliberate on the issues regarding the register.

“We need to work on the register because everybody says he is an NPP person now that the party is in office (government). Should we open the floodgates for all kinds of people to come and register their names? And those who are against me have organized party cards for NDC people to come and register,” Mr. Titus-Glover asserted.

He said, the chairman and the executives who met to decide on the issue of the voters’ register were updating the register.

“We have a polling register we use to elect the parliamentary candidate; we use that to elect the constituency executives and all names on that register is in the new one. But the issue is that we need to protect the party against entering wrong names into the register,” he said.

Speaking to the Ghana news Agency, The NPP Constituency Chairman for Tema East, Mr. Ofoe Teye said, “When we were going for the general elections there was division among the executives because some of them supported somebody during the primaries and that person lost, so those executives refused to attend some of our meetings to strategize for the elections, and this attitude continued after the elections.”

He said, “We can’t just allow any name to enter the register. We want people who are die-hard party members; people who had worked for the party to be registered”

He added that “we have records; we have our polling station executives whom we know are party members; we have documents about people who have been paying dues. We didn’t just go in there and started writing names.”

Mr Teye wondered why the Second Vice Chairman and his group had petitioned the regional executives of the party yet had gone ahead to speak to the press in a manner that suggested they lacked confidence in the regional executives in resolving the matter.

Source: GNA