The Central Regional Director of Elections for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Nurudeen Issah, has vowed that the party will reclaim all of its lost parliamentary seats in the region in 2020.
He said the cause would be championed by some new constituency executives the party will elect next week.
The elections for the party’s youth and women organizer executives in the Central Region come off at Winneba on Thursday, August 30, while the central polls will take place at Kasoa on Saturday, September 1, with both being events which he said will reinvigorate the NDC.
Issah told Citi News that the party had raised the confidence of its members in the electoral processes to engender maximum trust from the base, an element he says the party lacked in 2016 that affected it negatively.
“The most important thing in all the electioneering activity has to do with confidence; if the party activists are confident in the process and the exercises leading to the process, it gingers them up, and that is what prior to the 2016 election the party had, that the confidence of our people in our structures was not that strong”, Issah explained.
The Regional Director of Elections was optimistic that the party would also be able to win all swing constituencies to increase its numbers in parliament.
Before the 2016 elections, the NDC had 16 seats in the Region while the New Patriotic Party (NPP) had 7, but the party could get only four seats out of the 23 during the 2016 elections, including losing its two traditional constituencies, Ekumfi and Twifo-Atemokwa.
In all, 62 aspirants are contesting various executive positions in the Central Region to man the party’s administration into the next general elections in 2020.
On the preparations for the elections, Issah said all steps had been taken to make the elections free and fair for all aspirants, saying that all the necessary logistics for the events have been secured.
He explained, “What we have done is to get them (the aspirants) a sample of the ballots to go through and check, and if they have problems with it, they call on us to rectify them,” promising that the security of each aspirant and all delegates are assured.
To curb vote buying, the Director of Elections noted that the party has resolved to start the elections as early as possible: “If we get to the conference grounds, and the conference is supposed to start at 9 am, we will ensure we start at 9. At least, this will eliminate the issue of camping which hitherto would bring about the issue of vote buying”.
In his view, the Region’s tag as a swing region during elections will not even encourage aspirants to buy votes because of THE people in the region “vote according to their conscience”.
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By: Joseph Ackon-Mensah/citinewsroom.com/Ghana
