Parliamentary Candidate for Abura-Asebu-Kwamankese, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, has described the NPP’s super delegates’ conference as a convoluted electoral process.
He stated that the system which has been designed to reduce the final number of NPP presidential candidates to be presented to the general delegates’ conference restricts the frontiers of democracy.
According to him, there was nothing wrong with the old system where all the candidates would be presented to the general delegates’ conference for a collective choice to be made.
Describing the super delegates’ conference as a knee-jerk response to criticism the party faced in 2007, he said the NPP should not have tampered with the process.
“To be honest with you, I am not entirely sold on this super delegates business. I think it was a knee jerk response to the criticism they faced in 2007 when 17 people showed up. I think they misapprehended the criticism at the time. The criticism had to do more with the flamboyance and opulence displayed at the time and not necessarily the numbers.
“Because really apart from creating an opportunity for an unwieldy ballot paper which may confuse less enlightened voters, I don’t see what real problem that poses. What are you going to do for instance if in the parliamentary primaries 17 people show up to contest one particular constituency? Are you going to hold a super delegates’ conference on that one too?”
Mr. Kwakye Ofosu further noted that the super delegates’ conference would inadvertently skew the electoral results towards the “establishment candidate” as electorates would want to side with power.
“What people were concerned about was the overt show of opulence that is what you ought to have dealt with, you didn’t need to tamper with the process because what it does for me is to restrict the frontiers of democracy. You see we’re talking about 900 super delegates, these are crème-de-la-crème, anybody who is everybody in the NPP.
“And indeed Boakye Agyarko has complained that the tendency is for that process to skewed towards the establishment candidate because you see the people in that bracket are people who will naturally gravitate towards the centre of power in order to benefit from whatever largesse that they think that there is, and so in terms of the fairness and the openness and transparency of the process there is a bit of a difficulty.
“I don’t think that they should have done that. They should have still allowed the broad masses of the delegates to decide who qualifies. If you have to organize two rounds of voting then I think that everybody who is eligible to vote within your party ought to have had a say in how the numbers are pruned down,” he said.
Source: My Joy Online
