Politics of Saturday, 21 June 2014

Source: todaygh.com

Apraku promises clean campaign

Presidential hopeful of the New Patriotic Party (NPP,) Dr. Kofi Konadu Apraku, has promised delegates of a clean campaign ahead of the party’s presidential primaries slated for early December this year.

Dr. Apraku is among seven people who have far picked nomination forms for the presidential primaries of the party.

In an interview with Today, he said he has confidence in NPP’s delegates that they will give him the flag-bearership mantle to lead the party to annex power from the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).

“I know our delegates and I can tell you that they are hungry for power: therefore they will not do anything that will cause them defeat again,” the former Member of Parliament (MP) for Offinso-North stressed.

What the NPP needs at the moment, according to Dr. Aparku, is a leader who can bring all perceived factions in the party together after the primaries.

He noted that the party needs to put its house in order so as to win the confidence of the Ghanaian electorate, especially floating voters, to vote for the party in 2016.

That, Dr. Apraku said, “must start now.”

He therefore called on his other contestants for the presidential primaries to ensure that their campaigns are devoid of hate speech, character assassination, defamatory statements and personal attacks.

He also told them to admonish their supporters to refrain from the use of abusive language in the media against each other, adding “we are all from one family and therefore there is no need for us to fight in public.”

“Let’s avoid the temptation of giving arsenals to our opponents by insulting ourselves for nothing,” he advised.

The suffering Ghanaians will not forgive the NPP if we fail to bring redemption to them in 2016 by legitimately removing the NDC from power,” Dr. Apraku indicated.

‘’It is our [NPP] responsibility to save Ghana from its economic mess else the country is doomed forever,” he cautioned.

According to Dr. Apraku, there was the need to instill discipline in the party, particularly in its supporters, who are likely to flout the party’s constitution during their campaigns for their candidates.

He was also optimistic that the NPP will go through its presidential primaries successfully and come out more united to win ultimate power for Ghanaians.

He could however not fathom why some supporters would throw caution to the wind and wash the party’s dirty linen in public all because they do not like one candidate or the other.

Such an attitude, he noted, will not help the cause of the party to regain power, and thus urged all those engaged in what he described as “undemocratic tendencies” to stop.

In his estimation Ghanaians are tired of the NDC and its broken promises and are yearning for the NPP to take over the affairs of this country.