Today can report that, the national executives of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) are not comfortable with the Monday’s High Court ruling on the Representation of the People Amendment Act, also known as the ROPAA law, 2006 (Act699).
The High Court in Accra, presided over by His Lordship Justice Anthony K. Yeboah, on Monday, December 18, 2017 ordered the Electoral Commission (EC) to implement the law within 12 months.
Today gathered that, shortly after the ruling some national executives of the NDC, particularly, those in the various camps of the party’s presidential hopefuls went into a secret meeting to strategise on how to deal with the situation.
According to our sources, they fear that if the ROPAA is implemented it will make it difficult for whoever will lead the party in the 2020 elections to unseat the incumbent New Patriotic Party (NPP).
“If we allow the EC to implement this animal called ROPAA, my brother (referring to this reporter), then NDC is doomed in 2020”, a source at former President Mahama’s camp said.
This became obvious yesterday when the National Organiser of the NDC, Kofi Adams who is believed to be a loyalist of former President John Dramani Mahama on Citi FM said, “the NDC will challenge the implementation of the ROPAA law, as ordered by the court”.
According to him, the difficulties that political parties face in mobilizing and campaigning within the shores of the country would be compounded by an implementation of the law.
“Of course the issues that we raised are still very relevant today.
The fact still remains that political parties registered in Ghana here still have challenges to monitor the political processes even within Ghana so now you are going to follow every Ghanaian everywhere.
Is the Electoral Commission going to now resource and support political parties to make sure that they reach everywhere there will be a Ghanaian to campaign and to track the process or in other words to present party agents? We still insist that the law as it is, is very difficult to implement”, he averred.
Despite Mr. Adams’ concerns, the USA Branch Acting Organiser, Issa Balla Saeed, told journalists “both the party and the Ghanaian community are happy about the judgment”.
“The NPP members in particular and Ghanaians in general were very excited about this. I should say this has been out there for some time during Kufuor’s administration. Both NPP and Ghanaians in general are happy about the judgment.”, he said.
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