Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama Thursday picked his nomination forms to contest the ruling National Democratic Congress’ (NDCs) November 7 presidential primaries.
This brings the number of candidates who have picked nomination forms to contest the party’s presidential primaries to two after George Boateng, a youth organizer for the governing NDC at Oyarifa in the Madina Constituency, near here.
However, the NDC has asked the 40-year-old Boateng to follow due process by picking new forms for the contest.
Deputy General Secretary of the party, Koku Anyidoho, argues that Boateng cannot use those forms because they were not endorsed by him or the party’s General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketiah.
“The General Secretary has the mandate to sell and in his absence one of his deputies, has the mandate so if some administrative officers have given out some forms, those forms are not coming from a General Secretary. In fact that form the gentleman picked has not been endorsed by the General Secretary so it is a form that is null and void,” he explained.
Anyidoho revealed that Boateng came to the party’s office and met some officers who gave him the forms but said “they were not mandated to do so”.
There were calls for Mahama to go unopposed prior to the opening of nominations by the governing party.
Many political watchers have predicted a landslide victory for the sitting president in the up-coming primaries.
If the Ghanaian president emerges victorious in the presidential primaries, it would mark his second time of leading the party after defeating New Patriotic Party’s (NPPs) candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in the controversial 2012 presidential election.
The NDC will hold presidential and parliamentary primaries to elect a presidential candidate and 275 parliamentary candidates to contest the 2016 general election.
The NPP is the only political party to have so far elected its presidential and parliamentary candidates for next year’s polls. Enditem
Source: Xinhua
