The Statesman has learnt that the General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party has issued a circular to all regional and constituency branches of the party to begin with the process of selecting delegates for the national congress which takes place on Saturday, December 22.

The circular instructs party officers to "select” the delegates in accordance with articles 12 and 16 of the NPP constitution and in line with “administrative practices” employed for the process since 1992. This is the first such contest since the party was formed 15 years ago.

The highest decision-making body of the party, the National Council, has directed that the full list of delegates, as represented in photo albums of all 230 constituencies, should only be made available to presidential nominees two weeks before the national congress.

Yet, the various camps are expected to radically change their campaign strategies from November to focus mainly on the chosen delegates. The selection process is expected to be over by the end of November.

All in all less than 2,350 delegates will take part in nominating the party's presidential candidate for the December 2008 general elections.

Under article 12 of the NPP constitution, the presidential candidate is elected by the national congress, “which shall comprise of (i) 10 delegates from each constituency; (ii) 1 representative of the Founding Members from each Region; (iii) 1 representative of the Patrons from each Region; and (v) 1 representative of each overseas branch of the Party that is entitled to send a representative to the National Delegates Conference.”

Article 6, clause 18 of the same constitution illustrates how delegates are supposed to be chosen: “Every constituency executive committee shall convene an extraordinary constituency delegates conference to elect, when required, 6 members of the constituency who are not constituency Officers, together with 4 constituency officers, to be the 10 delegates of the constituency to attend the national congress.” The focus is naturally on the selection of the 2,300 delegates from the constituencies as they hold the key to who wins the presidential nomination.

Indeed, for some of the aspirants, top on the agenda of President Kufuor's planned Castle meeting yesterday was how to ensure a clean selection process for delegates. But, the meeting had to be postponed due to what the organisers explained as the 'unavailability’ of some of the heavyweight aspirants.

One constitutional expert has observed that though the NPP constitution spells out the composition of the delegation, it is, nevertheless, notoriously unhelpful on the critical issues of whom is entitled to vote at the extraordinary constituency delegates’ conference or how the elected delegates are to vote at the national congress.

The loose rule is that NPP delegates must reflect the popularity of the candidates at the constituency level because, after all a ‘delegate’ per se is not a free agent.

There are concerns about some delegates being effectively selected as prior delegates for particular candidates. Notwithstanding, the flexibility of the party’s constitutional provisions allows NPP delegates to act as free agents - free to cast their individual votes for any presidential candidate of a delegate’s own choosing.

Thus, even delegates presumed to have made priory pledges to particular presidential candidates may still be there for turning.

There are other situations, however rare, where delegates act as constituency agents because a constituency or region decides to vote en bloc for a particular candidate. That, election observers say, have happened in the past, though the voting and counting process are not designed to indicate how particular constituencies or regions voted.

Besides the 2,300 constituency delegates, the founding members and patrons are allowed to send a total of 20 delegates to the presidential nomination congress, with each body sending one delegate from each of the ten regions.

Also, "accredited" overseas branches can but only send a single voting representative to the congress.

A member of the Ghanaian intelligentsia in the Diaspora, Prof Kwaku Asare, was recently quoted in The Statesman as saying: "The great question of the 2008 NPP Presidential nomination race is not whether there are too many candidates. The great question is whether the rules of the game will be fair to all the players.

"Candidates who compete and lose are likely to accept and respect the outcome if the rules of the game are perceived to be fair. Discontent, frustration, and ultimately rebellion, set in when the rules are perceived to be unfair or inuring to the advantage of some of the candidates while disfavouring other candidates."