NPP Delegates 'Fight' NEC Over Decision To Vote On Electoral Area Basis

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NPP Delegates 'Fight' NEC Over Decision To Vote On Electoral Area Basis

The National Executive Committee (NEC) of NPP has been fiercely criticized over what is said to be the most “appalling and unwise decision” to allow for voting and counting to be done on electoral area basis in the upcoming parliamentary primaries.

According to some delegates and parliamentary aspirants of the party, the NEC decision is not only appalling, but is also skewed towards certain direction to favour the incumbent Members of Parliament.

Insisting on NEC to reverse their decision, the aggrieved delegates believed it would set the stage for serious squabbles, disunity, mistrust, antagonism and personal attacks during and after the polls.

The delegates, as monitored on the various radio and television stations, expressed utmost discomfort about the unpopular decision asserting that it does not make sense to create polling centres in electoral areas for less than 10 delegates and also expect the ballots to be counted. This arrangement they lamented would enable the aspirants to easily identify which delegates voted for, or voted against them.

"NEC did not do proper consultation to know that majority of our electoral areas have less than 10 Polling Station Executives. So allowing voting and counting in the presence of all the aspirants is not secret balloting enough, and will only create discomfort among delegates".

They are demanding NEC to rather zone the constituencies to make up for less than 100 voters per polling centre to conform to the social gathering protocols.

On the other hand, the delegates suggested that in an event that voting is done at electoral area, counting of ballots should be carried out at the constituency collation centres to avoid exposing the delegates to needless confrontation by discontented aspirants.

Some parliamentary aspirants have also raised serious concerns about the huge financial implications involved, should the primaries be held on electoral area basis.

According to them, the party National Executives had already overburdened them with a lot of cost due to the many shifting of dates.

The aspirants (names withheld) revealed that per the current NEC arrangement, they would have to recruit agents in every electoral area. Indicating that some constituencies had more than 50 electoral areas, with bad road network and no mobile communication networks to allow for monitoring.

"We will also have to transport, feed and pay some allowances to all these agents which doesn't make it a reasonable decision for NEC to impose on aspirants".

Meanwhile, the NPP National Executive Committee has set 20th June 2020 as the final date for the much-awaited parliamentary primaries across all the constituencies where there are sitting NPP Members of Parliament.