Can The NPP Show By Example A Clean, Free And Fair Election In Their Tamale Congress?

In the year 2013, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) initiated a historic Supreme Court suit against the Electoral Commission of Ghana and President John Dramani Mahama after the 2012 general elections alleging that electoral process was flawed with irregularities, malpractices and fraud. The Party challenged the outcome of the elections which favored President John Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) as announced by the EC and demanded that about four million votes be annulled. Specifically the NPP alleged over voting, voting without verification fraud in proxy voting and a doctored Overseas Voters Register. The Party made a brilliant case in court over the course of the eight months that the case ran and was therefore expecting a positive verdict for them but somehow things did not go well for them and the status quo was maintained. Scandal is today recalling this event not to cause anyone any pain but to make the point that as a people we all must learn some lessons from that event. More so, those who call for equity are obliged to always come with clean hands. In exactly twelve days the NPP will be holding their National Delegates Conference in Tamale at which they are expected to elect their National Leaders for the next our years. Ghana will be watching the NPP and indeed the whole world will be watching the NPP. Can the NPP use this opportunity to demonstrate to the world the kind of clean, transparent, free, fair and ideal election that they and indeed all of us want to experience in our multiparty democracy? So far things do not point in that direction. It is only twelve days to the elections and the Delegates Register is yet to be made available to the contesting parties. Twelve days to the D-Day and no one has seen the proxy list. Twelve days to the elections and the Elections Committee has not yet met with the contestants to discuss the modalities for the elections. Now we are not sure the NPP would have accepted this if the National Electoral Commission had committed these mistakes. There is also the issue of proxy votes. In the last Delegates Conference in Kumasi proxy votes became a thorny issue. Some contestants in that election believed proxy votes were used to cheat them out of the contest. Indeed we are told that some big people in the party voted over ten times each using proxies. Now that the party is going into another Conference after the Supreme Court Case, the NPP will have to be careful they do not turn themselves into a laughing stock. They have a responsibility to display best practice in elections. It will be an irony if any member of the party feels cheated after the elections and then proceeds to take the party to Court. That will the height of hypocrisy and no one will take the NPP serious if they can cheated within their own ranks and still expect that when it comes to the National Elections everything must be spick and span. THE NPP HAS THE CHANCE NOW TO DEMONSTRATE HOW THEY WANT AFARI GYAN TO CONDUCT FROM NATIONAL ELECTIONS.