Internal polls: NDC must learn from NPP, says Samoa Addo

A member of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Nii Kpakpo Samoa Addo has congratulated the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) for being able to organise its internal elections.

He maintains that despite being the party in power and having to deal with numerous internal wrangling, the NPP must be applauded for following and delivering on its electoral calendar.

“I want to congratulate the NPP for sticking to her [electoral] calendar as supposed to my own NDC party who are yet to start. I’ve always held a personal opinion that immediately after an election is over, the next cycle begins. I am not one who believes that two years before an election before you start reengineering and revitalising your party. I am of the opinion that once the last election is over, the processes for the next must start,” Addo said on Asaase Radio’s show The Forum on Saturday (30 April).

“For a party in power to actually be the ones to have taken the lead in conducting their polling station election and are now conducting their constituency election, it means that give or take, probably by December they would’ve completed the whole process and then they will be waiting to do the big one, which is the presidential primaries. That must be a credit to them as an organised party because at the end of the day, we who are in opposition and should rather have taken the lead, because we have the luxury of time and we don’t have the extra burden of being in power, we’re late,” Addo said.

NDC should learn from NPP

Addo added that “why is it that we in opposition should actually not have started our process of leading up to clearing our internal elections? You have a situation where the person you contested with who is in government and who are having to wear two hats; government business and party business are able to organise their polling station elections, are in the process of organising their constituency elections, regional, national, they have a calendar they’re following and you the one in opposition who is supposed to be hungry for power are rather now doing reorganisation meetings, you can’t be serious.”

“I don’t see how we in opposition are rather late in starting our internal party elections and will rather be taking delight in fights in another party’s elections. I rather think that the NPP must be commended, you can’t run a national election of 200 and something constituencies and not have clashes.

“It is an impossibility but you cannot also say that those clashes have overshadowed the whole process. So, I think that the NDC can learn something from the NPP, we’re [NDC] late, we don’t have any business being the ones to be lagging behind when we’re in opposition, the NPP has shown us that it is better to start early than to be struggling behind and giving all manner of excuses with the hope that your party people will accept,” Addo told Asaase Radio’s Kwaku Agyeman-Budu.

Listen to Samoa Addo in the attached audio below: 

Nicholas Brown

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