General News of Wednesday, 22 March 2017

Source: starrfmonline.com

'Arrogant' NDC disrespected voters – Boateng Gyan

Yaw Boateng Gyan,former National Organiser of the NDC Yaw Boateng Gyan,former National Organiser of the NDC

A former National Organiser of the National Democratic Congress Yaw Boateng Gyan has hit hard at the party, saying most of the executives disrespected the electorate.

“The other issue has to do with the way and manner our people were talking to the electorate…very arrogant and disrespectful, how would we have appealed to the voters.

“Some of us couldn’t talk because they said we have been voted out of the executive position of the party and so we shouldn’t talk…a lot of things went wrong,” Boateng Gyan told the host of Abusua Nkommo, Kwame Adinkrah on Abusua FM.

He opined that the party was in a porous situation than the then opposition New Patriotic Party ahead of the 2016 elections.

According to Gyan, the NDC was plagued with internal crisis but capitalized on the internal wrangling within the NPP to cloak its problems.

“Kwame, believe me…the NDC was much more divided than the NPP but we pretended as if all was well and decided that we talk about the NPP’s troubles,” Boateng Gyan told the host of Abusua Nkommo, Kwame Adinkrah on Abusua FM.

“People who dared to talk publicly about the party’s challenges were vilified and sidelined, how were we going to hear diverging opinions internally. “If we had paid attention to what people, our own party people were saying, I am telling you the NDC wouldn’t have been in opposition by now,” he emphasised.

“The grassroots of the party were angry because they were not resourced to work for the party, rather outsiders and strangers were enjoying all the party’s resources for campaigns.

“For example, common party bills…the party had to send people from Accra to come to my hometown in Sunyani to erect billboards when our own local people could have been engaged, so they felt sidelined and so refused to contribute their energy to the campaign.

“If you look at all these factors, must you be told that the party was deeply divided….we were even lucky the grassroots didn’t rise up in anger against those sent from Accra to fix campaign materials at the local level,” Boateng Gyan stressed.