... Out-going MP Declares

THE NEW Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament (MP) for the New Abirem constituency in the Eastern Region, Dr William Boakye Akoto, who was recently defeated at the party?s constituency primary was beside himself with rage when he spoke to The Chronicle last weekend, declaring that his party would bring corrupt MPs to the next Parliament and suggested that the government releases funds for prisons authorities to expand the prisons to accommodate the corrupt MPs who would be caught by the law.

In the exclusive interview, Akoto claimed his investigations had revealed that the party?s new contestants who defeated sitting MPs in the primaries had spent between ?1billion and ?2 billion to influence the national and regional executives as well as constituency delegates to win their various tickets.

His investigation had also uncovered dubious sources from which these new aspiring MPs obtained loans with a very high interest rate. ?I have sighted an agreement signed by these new aspiring MPs and their financiers which states that they would use their position in the legislature and the executive arms of the government to pay this money at the end of their term in office.?

Another agreement stated that the new MPs would use their position in the legislature, the executive and the district assemblies to influence the bidding processes of contracts in favour of their financiers so as to benefit from the investments they had made to ensure their victories at the party?s primaries, Dr. Akoto affirmed.

He disclosed that he and other defeated MPs in the party?s primaries would soon come out with a report on their investigations which disclosed how party executives from the national to the ward level benefited from these monetary and material inducements to influence the party?s primaries in favor of the higher bidder which was most of the time the new contestants.

Akoto mentioned the general secretary of the party, Mr. Dan Botwe and the national organizer Mr. Lord Commey as the two national executives who had benefited immensely from these monetary and material inducements to influence the outcomes of most of the primaries.

He alleged also that almost all the regional chairmen of the party had benefited in terms of monetary and material gains, with some of them getting more than one car and huge sums of money paid into the foreign accounts of these new parliamentary aspirants.

? In my constituency, the lady (Mrs. Esther Obeng Dapaah) who contested me technically does not qualify to contest in the constituency because she does not hail from there and had never stayed there yet she was able to contest by using monetary and material inducements to influence the regional chairman, Nana Ankamah, the constituency chairman and Mr. Emmanuel Amoako who is the presiding member of the district assembly who had a pick-up and a tractor for his farming project,? he further alleged.

He reiterated his intention to contest the New Abirem seat as an Independent candidate, saying, ? My people want me to go back to parliament and complete the numerous projects that are ongoing in the constituency. I cannot therefore disappoint them.

The president cannot even stop me from contesting as an Independent candidate.?

He, however, added that he would urge his supporters to vote for President Kufuor in the presidential poll, explaining that the President was not the cause of the NPP?s ?moneycracy?.

?Those who have dragged the party?s name into disrepute are the national, regional and the constituency executives who double as the delegates for the elections at the constituency primaries.?

He has, therefore, suggested that all card-holding members of the party within the constituencies be made to select their preferred parliamentary candidates at the constituency primaries.