Thursday, March 24, 2016

I WON’T VOTE FOR AKUFO-ADDO – AFOKO

By William Yaw Owusu
Thursday,March 24, 2016

Suspended national chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Paul Afoko, has ruled out voting for the party’s flagbearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in the November 7 presidential election.

“I am not sure I will vote for Nana Addo. My vote is my secret; it’s up to me and my God whom I will vote for,” he told UTV, an Accra-based private television station, yesterday.

Mr Afoko is currently fighting a legal battle with the party in court, challenging his suspension as unconstitutional; but at the same time, the embattled chairman has been granting interviews to some selected media houses virtually running down the party he purports to be a leading member.

Within this week alone Afoko - whose brother, Gregory Afoko, is on trial for allegedly killing the Upper East Regional chairman of the NPP, Adams Mahama - has embarked on a media hype, appearing on not less than three television stations and a number of radio stations, in a desperate effort to paint the NPP leadership black and make it unattractive. 
 
He started the round of interview on Metro TV, moved to GBC24 television before the UTV encounter yesterday where he stated emphatically that he did not see himself campaigning for the NPP presidential candidate.

“It will be very difficult to join Nana Addo’s campaign. I can’t do that,” he stressed.

He said he is still the chairman of the NPP. “NPP is in my blood,”  he claimed, but made a contradictory statement that neither he nor Kwabena Agyepong (suspended general secretary) would campaign for the party.

“What is going on at the party’s head office won’t allow me to join his (Nana Akufo-Addo’s) campaign. And I know Kwabena Agyepong will do same. We can’t risk our lives,” he said.

He said it was Nana Akufo-Addo who spearheaded his ‘unconstitutional’ suspension in the party.

He claimed that he had a roadmap that was to win the election for the NPP in November saying, “If I had not been suspended and my plan for power had been followed, I would have been able to confidently give you an answer that we can win the election…even the NDC, looking at our activities, would know that they had already lost. I can’t say definitely that we will win the election.

 “What disturbs me more as the chairman of the NPP is the way some leaders are being suspended and sacked from the party just because they shared a separate view on an issue discussed. Indeed, this behaviour by some party executives to me is like ‘madness’.

“I will continue to be the chairman of the NPP until the over 5,200 people who voted me as chairman of the party on 13th April, 2014 at Tamale again vote me out of power.

“Problems in the NPP as at now still hold unsolved and would continue to be so until executives of the party work in line with the party’s constitution."
He said he does not get close to Nana Akufo-Addo, asserting, “I don’t go to his house anymore. What am I going to do there? We are not friends; I don’t call him.”


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