General News of Tuesday, 9 July 2013

Source: Joy Online

NPP suspends Wereko-Brobby for 2 years

The National Executive Committee of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) last Friday slapped a two-year ban on Charles Wereko-Brobby for exhibiting behaviour that put the party's image into disrepute, the New Statesman newspaper reports.

Dr Wereko-Brobby is also to write an apology letter to the party within one week for bringing the name of the party into disrepute.

For the two years that his membership will be suspended, he is to further refrain from making any disparaging remarks about the party.

The punishment was meted out after the party's National Executive Committee received the report of the Disciplinary Committee of the party.

The Statesman can confirm that the Disciplinary Committee recommended a one-year suspension, but the NEC deemed it as too lenient and added another 12 months to it.

Dr Wereko-Brobby, it is recalled, made derogatory remarks about the party's decision to challenge the outcome of the 2012 presidential election at the Supreme Court through several publications in the print and online media outlets.

The disciplinary committee was chaired by Most Rev. Dr Asante Antwi. It had Addo Kufuor, Gladys Asmah, R. O Solomon, Nii Ayikoi Otoo, Opare Hammond, Ken Wuud and Sharika Abdulai as some of its members.

Dr Wereko-Brobby faced the committee for allegedly exhibiting behaviour that put the party's image into disrepute. That included his description of Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, the party's star witness in the ongoing presidential election petition, as "clueless."

Prior to the disciplinary action, Dr Wereko-Brobby was suspended in accordance with the party's constitution which allows such disciplinary action to be taken against members whose conduct is deemed to have brought the NPP into disrepute.

Tarzan, as he is popularly called, prior to the commencement of disciplinary proceedings, asked, the committee to abandon proceedings because, according to him, it had been compromised by alleged prejudicial comments attributed to one of its members, Nii Ayikoi Otoo, but the General Secretary of the party, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, at the time said the disciplinary committee would continue with its work.

According to him, the supposed prejudicial comments by Ayikoi Otoo would not in any way affect the final recommendations of the committee. "The disciplinary committee is made up of eight people, so if he (Tarzan) had a problem with one of them, he should have raised it before the committee but he failed to do that,” he stressed.