NPP to elect 2024 presidential candidate in November 2023, parliamentary candidates January 2024?

The National Council of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has tentatively decided that the party will hold its conference to elect its flagbearer for the December 2024 presidential elections in November 2023.

The Council is also said to be considering the conduct of its parliamentary primaries to elect parliamentary candidates for constituencies where it has sitting Members of Parliament in January 2024.

The party in the 8th Parliament, has one hundred and thirty-seven (137) seats. The independent MP for the Fomena Constituency however works with the NPP Caucus, which brings the number of the majority caucus to 138.

The National Council reached these conclusive timelines at its meeting held at Alisa Hotel on Friday 23 December 2022.

On “orphan constituencies” (parliamentary seats occupied by the opposition), the National Council meeting could not decide on specific timelines, however, majority of primaries to elect parliamentary candidates for such constituencies are expected to take place in April and May 2023.

There are currently one hundred and thirty-six (136) orphan constituencies with the exception of the Assin North Constituency seat which is technically vacant because of a Supreme Court injunction on the sitting NDC MP stopping him from holding himself as an MP. The case is however pending at the High Court.

Ahead of the National Council meeting, some NPP Members of Parliament advocated for the party’s presidential and parliamentary (sitting MPs) primaries to take place at the same time.

However, the National Council is said to have suggested that the presidential primaries should take place in November 2023, 13 months to the 2024 elections, while the parliamentary primaries for sitting MPs take place in January 2024, 11 months to the general election.

Pending elections

The National Council in their deliberations directed that elections held in the Akwatia Constituency, from the polling station level through to constituency executives’ level, should be conducted all over again.

Concerning the Sunyani East Constituency elections, the National Council decided to constitute a committee to investigate how the elections were conducted at the constituency from the polling station upwards and to ascertain if indeed, the elections were held at all.

Internal polls

The NPP from 19 February through to 16 July 2022, conducted its internal elections. The party during this period, elected her polling station, constituency, regional and national executive.

The polling station level elections were held from February 19 to March 5, 2022 while the electoral area elections took place from March 18 to March 20 2022.

The constituency executive elections were held at the Constituency Annual Delegates Conference which was supervised by Constituency Election Committees between April 22 and April 24, 2022.

The regional executive elections and for that matter the Regional Annual Delegates Conference were held between 20 and 22 May 2022, and it was supervised by the Regional Election Committees.

The last election held was the National Executive elections. It was conducted during the party’s Annual National Delegates Conference which took place from 14 to 16 July 2022 at the Accra Sports Stadium and it was supervised by a National Elections Committee.

Wilberforce Asare

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