Accra, Ghana, September 26, 2019//-Tension is brewing in the largest opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) Sissala East constituency of the Upper West Region over T&T meant for delegates at the party’s recent parliamentary primaries.
The agitating delegates in a petition blamed the constituency chairman, Baku Rafik and other executives for allegedly swindling the money meant for their T&T.
The petition was occasioned by the alleged thievery of money earmarked for each delegate during presidential and parliamentary primaries respectively.
At some point it was equally reported that monies for the maintenance of the party’s programmes at the constituency level was always diverted to project or finance his preferred candidate at the expense of others thus milking the party and delegates for a candidate he supports.
“More like robbing Peter to pay Paul. Even in the recent parliamentary primaries delegates of the constituency had to undergo this same ordeal under their draconian chairman when Ghc20.00 as T&T budgeted for them each was again spent with no apology by their ill- infested minded chairman who feels that the ‘party is in his pocket’ and no other person is vested with authority to question his actions”, according to the petitioners.
After all persuasions failed and amicable resolution reached a deadlock the aggrieved petitioners and the delegates decided to complain to the regional executives to bring their focus to events making bad taste for the party’s victory in the upcoming 2020 election for possible redress only to be opposed in their own full glare by this grim-fisted and wanton constituency elements plotting a selfish agenda which may cause the party in the election, they said.
However when African Eye Report contacted Mr Rafik via phone, he denied swindling their T&T. But they insisted that he did.
They alleged that when they decided to petition for answers from the constituency executives to why they have been persistently cheating them, a lawless engineered group of supporters of Issah Mohammed Bataglia, the NDC Sissala East Parliamentary candidate and his hen-pegged constituency executives in their usual adversarial ways again stormed a meeting billed with the Regional Executives to scuffle it.
They threatened to beat up the petitioners and hijacked the meeting proceedings thus violating due process of well constituted party activities at the constituency office on last Saturday.
In what seemed to be their planned usual ugly confrontations, denigrating of the intelligence of the lager cross section of the NDC family in the Sissala East yet vilifying and show of man-ship how could a parliamentary candidate’s supporters accompanied and fueled by some constituency executives stormed into a meeting striking to beat up petitioners? The aggrieved youth questioned.
With all due respect in going by the party’s structures and noble constitution members of the party who feels cheated or aggrieved may petition the leadership of the party for redress. And this was what exactly the petitioners did.
Their petition was dully accepted at the regional level of which a well constituted team of regional executives were dispatched forthwith to meet the aggrieved petitioners in order to heal wounds and cement unity.
But events unfortunately turned sour, if not bitter and drug filled likened to an idiotic beast. An eye witness at the scene reported that “what happened at the party office today can’t be described, even the delegation from the regional office were chocked themselves” said a petitioner present at the stampeded meeting.
Serially on their part but sadly too the constituency chairman has consistently cheated, insulted, unjustly treated and betrayed the delegates of the Sissala East and NDC family as a whole for quite a long time now.
Instructively, the Sissala East is an orphan constituency for the NDC with Tumu as its epic centre. Disunity and leadership failure has in the past characterised it into a trajectory quagmire.
To many of the disappointed youth a disunited NDC cannot fly come 2020 thus the urgent need to iron out all factions holding wall-to-wall opinion without pandering to populist sentiments.
With the revolving door of continuous elections fast approaching, there are many questions still unanswered. Would the constituency executives who many party faithful believed are on a collision course deflates their ego and retool their rules of engagement for a united NDC?
African Eye Report
