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The National Democratic Congress (NDC) is happy with the huge interest by party members in the Ashanti Region for the impending parliamentary primaries. At least this is the indication being given by the General Secretary of the party, Johnson Asiedu Nketia.

He made the revelation in an interview with Citi News on Thursday when the party closed nomination for aspirants hoping to contest in the parliamentary and presidential primaries slated for November 7.

“This year the process has been again very much subscribed in the Ashanti Region, we are pleasantly surprised about that because in the previous years, even in years that we won election we had some difficulty recruiting candidates for some constituencies in the region,” a startled Asiedu Nketia remarked.

“Ashanti, everybody knows that it is the stronghold of the main opposition party and the level of intimidation in some of the constituencies when you don’t belong to their party tends to scare potential candidates,” he added.

Filing of nomination forms for the various aspirants ended on Thursday, September 10 2015, across the country with the exception of the Ashanti Region which commenced the process a week later, compared to other regions.

Commenting on the way forward for the electoral process after the closing of nominations, the NDC scribe also said the executives seek to adopt ‘a one stop shop vetting’ for aspirants in this year’s primaries.

“This year we are not likely to stagger the vetting where the constituency concludes their vetting then submit the shortlisted candidates to the region for onward submission to the national executives. We will do a one stop shop vetting where you have representatives of constituencies, regional and national in every region,” he said.

Asiedu Nketia further stated that the party has provided alternative arrangements for aspirants that were negatively affected by the decision by some regional executives asking them to fulfill some party payments before being served with nomination forms.

Aspirants within the Volta and some constituencies in the Greater Accra regions were made to pay extra monies as development levies. But issues relating to such issues according to Mr. Nketia have been adequately addressed.

Meanwhile the party says it will not comment further on George Boateng’s decision to contest President Mahama in the presidential race. Asiedu Nketia however reiterated the party’s position that it considers George Boateng to be of unsound mind.