General News of Friday, 18 December 2009

Source: The heritage

Big men chase NDC cards

Everyday, a minimum of twenty people, mostly political bigwigs, storm the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) to buy the party’s membership cards to be part of the umbrella family.

In a month, one constituency demands a minimum of 2,000 membership cards from the headquarters for hundreds of applicants at the constituency level across the country, the latest being some 3,000 cards for the party members at Bekwai in the Ashanti region.

The Ashanti region had until recently been in an unlikely address from where people would troop in droves to the NDC camp to plead for enrolment.

The Heritage newspaper reported that some gurus who are nurturing hopes of becoming ministers or appointees of President John Evans Atta Mills, or get some other favours, on daily basis, visit the headquarters of the umbrella at Kokomlemle in Accra to buy the GH¢500.00 platinum cards, the highest priced card.

The other set of cards in high demand are those branded as Gold – GH¢200.00, Silver – GH¢100.00, Bronze – GH¢50.00 — and the constituency cards that sell at GH¢2.00.

Inferred from the foregoing, granting that on one particular day all of the 20 applicants opted for the platinum membership cards; that could bag a neat GH¢10,000 or ¢100million for the party that only recently was struggling for survival.

The high demand for the cards, which was not the case until the party won power after languishing in opposition for eight years, has thrilled some staff of the ruling political party.

According to them, the increasing demand for NDC membership cards from people across the political divide depicts good signs of better fortunes for the party in the 2012 elections.

Some of the staff members, however, cautioned that the trooping of people to be part of the NDC fold could be a bad omen, as a number of applicants could only be interested in taking advantage of the party only for the time being to receive favours.