Politics of Saturday, 30 October 2004

Source: GNA

CPP, NDC accuse NPP attempts to marginalize Opposition

Accra, Oct 30, GNA - The National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the Convention People's Party (CPP) on Saturday accused the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) of adopting exclusion methods to stifle the opposition.

The two parties said "the government has failed to provide vehicles to the political parties contesting the December 7 General Elections to ensure a level playing field".

Speaking in a separate interviews with the GNA in Accra, Dr Edmund Delle, National Chairman and Leader of CPP and Dr Josiah Aryeh, General Secretary of the NDC, said these were clear attempts to kill multi-party democracy in the country.

Dr Aryeh said the NDC government, through the Electoral Commission (EC), in Elections 2000 gave 50 vehicles to the political parties contesting the elections to enable the parties to campaign effectively. Each presidential candidate was given one vehicle and the remaining distributed proportionally according to the number of parliamentary candidates contesting the elections.

The NDC, CPP and NPP were given eight each, the Peoples National Convention (PNC) and National Reform Party (NRP) seven each and the United Ghana Movement (UGM) four, while the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP) was given one.

He said in the 1992 Elections the Government gave Niva/Lada vehicles to the political parties but collected them after the elections.