Digitisation: NPP Goes Digital With The Election Of Electoral Area Coordinators

Nominations for electoral area co-ordinators of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is scheduled for March 14 to March 15, 2022.

The party has also fixed March 18 – 20, 2022 to hold its Electoral Area Coordinators elections.

As part of measures to make nomination forms more accessible to all interested party members, the party has resolved to upload the forms on its website and social media platforms for free downloads.

The General Secretary of the party, John Boadu, who announced this at a press conference in Accra last Thursday, March 10, 2022, however, said members who would download the forms would be required to submit the completed nomination forms to the respective Polling Stations and Electoral Area Elections Committee, where they would be required to pay GH¢50 as their filing fee.

He also indicated that notwithstanding the upload of the forms online, the party would send at least five hardcopies of the nomination forms to each Electoral Area for interested members.

The NPP’s chief scribe said that for purposes of this electoral area elections, no new electoral areas shall be created in any constituency, adding that the existing Electoral Areas shall be maintained in spite of any provisions to the contrary.

POLLING STATION DISTURBANCES

Touching on some developments that had emerged from the party’s recently held polling station elections, Mr Boadu said the party would take disciplinary action against all persons whose actions resulted in bringing the name of the party into disrepute during the elections.

According to him, although the party’s recent polling stations elections were largely successful, the exercise witnessed pockets of disturbances in some places.

For him, many of the issues that resulted in the disturbances could have been avoided if the aggrieved supporters had used the party’s laid down procedures to resolve them.

THE CASE OF FOMENA

Mr Boadu said the party was taking steps to expel from the party its members who took part in painting the party’s office at Fomena in the Ashanti Region in the colours of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Some aggrieved NPP members at Fomena were captured on video repainting the party’s office in the colours of the NDC.

Reacting to the incident, Mr Boadu said it was despicable that some party members would go to the extent of repainting the party’s colours in those of another party over an issue of misunderstanding.

For him, the supporters acted on misinformation, noting that if they had sought answers to their grievances from the right sources, such an embarrassing incident would not have occurred.

“In the specific case of the disturbances witnessed at Fomena, including the painting of the Party Office with NDC colours, the party takes serious view of this gross misconduct which is not only reprehensible but also an affront to the very dignity of the party,” he noted.

Mr Boadu explained that considering the peculiar nature of Fomena’s case, the party did not and could not have sent nomination forms to Fomena for the conduct of the elections, let alone, to have handed over all such forms to the Independent Member of Parliament, as alleged.