Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, a former finance minister, has withdrawn from the NDC flagbearer race.
After the National Democratic Congress (NDC) holds its presidential and legislative elections on Saturday, May 13, Dr. Duffuor hopes to become the party’s leader.
Prior to Saturday’s primary elections, the former finance minister expressed alarm over a few inconsistencies in the party’s voter list.
Dr. Duffuor accused the party leadership of breaking the agreement and assurance given to the three presidential candidates to address the register-related concerns prior to Saturday’s elections in his remarks to a press conference on Friday evening.
All parties present at the meeting presided over by the former speaker of the house of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Edward Doe Adjaho, decided that the Party Chairman, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, would immediately assemble a technical team made up of the technical representatives from the three candidates for president and the party’s election committee to assess how quickly the irregularities with the voters register could be resolved in order to prepare for the presidential primaries.
“Once this was established, the technical committee was to submit a report to the parties.” Our technological team is performing this task at the Party headquarters as we talk, as I speak with you.
“However, in a complete and unacceptable breach of faith, the party executives went ahead and called a press conference to announce that the elections would take place tomorrow without having addressed the issues relating to the voters register as decided at the meeting of the Council of Elders,” the party chairman told him and his team.
“My concerns that the party is not ready to conduct a free and fair election is evident for all to see,” Dr. Duffuor continued. Participating in such would be like to purposefully drinking from a calabash that was poisoned. I have been forced to withdraw from the presidential race after speaking with my supporters around the country because I am unable to run in an election that is obviously rife with anomalies despite my best attempts to call attention to them.
The contest on Saturday will now be between Kojo Bonsu, a former mayor of Kumasi, and former president John Dramani Mahama, who is casting his ballot in his home town of Bole.
