The ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has strongly condemned the incidents of altercations that occurred in some of its polling stations during its parliamentary primaries to elect Parliamentary candidates for the 2020 elections.

Describing the incidents as unacceptable, a statement issued by National Chairman, Freddie Blay said “the party is already initiating moves to investigate them thoroughly and if necessary apply the appropriate sanctions. We must also discourage the unfortunate escalating occurrences of alleged influence-peddling and inducements across the board, acknowledging that these definitely constitute a threat to Ghana’s fledging and young democracy. ”

It further asked all members of the party to close their ranks and focus on winning the 2020 elections.

Below is the full statement

On behalf of the National Executive Committee of our party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), I express my sincere

appreciation to all contestants and delegates for their efforts in seeing to the successful organization of the just ended 2020 NPP Parliamentary Primaries conducted in most constituencies where we have NPP members of Parliament.

I also thank the officers of the Electoral Commission for yet again rising up to the occasion of supervising the elections in a fair and transparent manner.

We equally thank our friends from the media who have given comprehensive coverage and reportage and generated much interest in this year’s Primaries, even in the face of COVID 19 pandemic.

By all standards, the primaries have been a well-conducted and keenly contested one.

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The contest has demonstrated the vibrancy and attractiveness of the NPP.

As we conclude this phase of our internal parliamentary elections, I will urge all contestants who won to be magnanimous in their victory celebrations and those who lost to be gracious in accepting their loses and personal setbacks, the NPP and our country Ghana remain the ultimate winners.

Those who may still have disagreements and complains with the process are encouraged to activate the Party’s laid down procedures for redress and reconciliation.

As a party, let us all endeavour to guard against giving ammunition to our opponents, for vicious and character assassinating attacks.

Reported cases of Altercations in a few polling stations are unacceptable and the party strongly condemns that.

The party is already initiating moves to investigate them thoroughly and if necessary apply the appropriate sanctions. We must also discourage the unfortunate escalating occurrences of alleged influence-peddling and inducements across the board, acknowledging that these definitely constitute a threat to Ghana’s fledging and young democracy.

Rather than dividing our ranks, I believe the successful outcome of this Parliamentary Primaries which has been in the spirit of family competition, friendly hostilities and sportsmanship, be used by all aspirants to energize the grassroots, mobilize our supporters for the compilation exercise of the EC’s new voters’ register and galvanize our energies towards the December polls.

Day in day out, The New Patriotic Party continue to set new standards in confronting challenges with the development of our constitutional democracy. Indeed, we have demonstrated beyond doubt, that as a people, we can overcome the limitations this COVID 19 pandemic poses to our society and manage it in a manner that enables us to continue to carry out our constitutional privileges, economic activities and social lives.

Just as the President, H.E Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo indicated, the NPP cannot let the good people of Ghana down after voting overwhelmingly for the party in the 2016 general elections.

The Ghanaian electorates have confidence in the visionary and exemplary leadership of the President and are largely convinced that the New Patriotic Party has what it takes to bring about prosperity and dignity to the good people of Ghana.

Therefore, our conduct and activities as party members must be geared towards sustaining that confidence.

Obviously, we must acknowledge that the president is delivering well on his mandate, however, we must bear in mind that we are not out of the woods yet.

The undoubting task of nation-building lies ahead of us and this is inextricably linked to our December 2020 national elections victory.

All in all, I sincerely thank you.