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Ghana’s Former Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu, has stated that he is worried over the recent backbiting and ethnic conflict in the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the lead-up to its national delegates conference.
Mr. Amidu who condemned the act indicated it amounted to a “shame” because the opposing NDC was founded and nursed to represent the 31st December Revolutionary tradition.
His comments come ahead of the NDC’s congress slated for Saturday, December 17, 2022, to elect its national officers ahead of the 2024 elections.
The exercise has since generated fierce tension among contestants, especially the chairmanship position that is keenly contested between incumbent Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo and General Secretary Johnson Asiedu Nketia.
Amidst the turn of events, the incumbent Chairman of the NDC is reported to have been pleading his ethnicity as a qualification to be maintained as the Chairman of the NDC.
Meanwhile, Asiedu Nketiah has been captured in an alleged audio claiming the NDC went to the supreme court to challenge the 2020 general election without its collated figures.
Commenting on the development ahead of the election, the former Attorney General said the party has now been reduced to what he termed as “politics of ethnic arithmetic.”
He, however, noted that the founder of the NDC, the late President Jerry John Rawlings, and the late Justice D. F. Annan who co-chaired the meeting at the Bluegate to agree to form the NDC, were not ethnocentric or tribalistic.
According to him, Asiedu Nketiah and Samuel Ofosu Ampofo have turned the contest for the chairmanship of the party into “ethnic conflict for supremacy.”
“The resemblance between the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) appears to have become indistinguishable to the extent that the leading members of the NDC appear to have turned the contest for the Chairmanship of the NDC into an ethnic conflict for supremacy.
“As a foundation member of the NDC who was in the room when Mr Justice D. F. Annan advocated for an umbrella party to bring together all those diverse groups of people from other political traditions and the revolutionary ranks who could not join an Nkrumaist formation political party which was in the works by another member of the PNDC.
“I was shocked to hear the incumbent Chairman of the NDC pleading his ethnicity as a qualification to be maintained as the Chairman of the NDC.
“It is a shame that the National Democratic Congress which we founded and nursed to represent the 31st December Revolutionary tradition has now been reduced to the politics of ethnic arithmetic,” Martin Amidu said in an article available to angelonline.com.gh
He was quick to describe Mr. Ofosu-Ampofo’s plea of Akyem ethnicity as negative electioneering and sins against the 31st December Revolution tradition and added that the “tribal element in the Chairmanship election of the NDC is a dangerous development.”
He furthered and warned the duo to be mindful of their utterances to ensure it does not betray the people of the 31st December Revolutionary cause because the NDC in 1992 was founded for the grassroots citizen.
“We founded the NDC in 1992 for the grassroots citizen. Do not betray the people and the 31st December Revolutionary cause,” parts of his article advised.
To conclude, he prophesied that such actions by the NDC have the potential to aid President Nana Akufo-Addo’s “long game for election 2024 to install his preferred candidate as President of Ghana on 7 January 2025.”
