CPP members being forced to join NDC - Greenstreet (page 16)

December 19, 2008

THE General Secretary of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Mr Ivor Greenstreet has said the decision by the Northern Regional Secretariat of the party to support the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the December 28 presidential run-off might have been made under duress.
He said he had earlier on received information from the Northern Region that the CPP members were being forced to join the NDC else they risk having their houses burnt and other properties destroyed.
Reacting to a story carried by the Daily Graphic today (Thursday) in which the Northern Regional Secretariat of the CPP was reported to have declared its intention to support the candidature of Professor John Atta Mills of the NDC in the December 28 presidential election run-off, Mr Greenstreet said although he appreciated the difficulty the branch found itself, the Central Committee of the party would still have to deliberate on the issue and take a decision on it.
He said it was strange for the Secretariat to openly come out with that declaration after the Central Committee had categoricaly stated that CPP would not attach itself to either the New Patriotic Party (NPP) or the NDC during the run-off. He described the incident as untimely, unfortunate and reprehensible.
Mr Greenstreet said the CPP decided not to align itself with either the NPP or the NDC because the party had realised that its earlier decision to support each of the two parties in the past did not help develop the CPP but rather created problems within it.
“Instead of helping the party as one would have wished, such moves in the past had rather been divisive”, he stressed.
The General Secretary said the CPP had learnt its lesson the more now that the party had managed to win a parliamentary seat in the Jommoro Constituency through the daughter of the founder of the party, Madam Samia Nkrumah without support from any other political party and hoped to continue from there.
He stated that the executive had listened to concerns raised by the rank and file of the party as well as the general public and taken a final decision not throw its weight behind any party but rather allow the individual members to vote for their any of the parties in the race.
In today’s (Thursday) issue of the Daily Graphic, the Northern Regional Secretariat of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) was said to have declared its intention to support the candidature of Professor Mills in the December 28 presidential election run-off.
According to the secretariat, even though the national executive of the party was yet to take its final stand as to who to support in the run-off, ‘‘we of the Northern Region are meanwhile responding to the exigencies of this critical moment in our nation’s history.’’
‘‘It is a clash of the forces of peace and those of confrontational politics; it is a clash of ideas and manifestos; it is a clash between humility and arrogance; it is a clash of characters, and to remain neutral in the face of such clear choices will be unfortunate’’, the CPP branch indicated.
According to the Northern Regional Organiser of the CPP, Mr Basharu Daballi in a statement, the party entered into this year’s elections on a platform of change and that the decisive battle will be on December 28 ‘‘between the forces of change and the forces of stagnation’’.
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