NDC COPYCAT SAYS MAC MANU

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Wednesday, June 08, 2016

The Campaign Manager of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Peter Mac Manu, has said the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) cannot compel the NPP to launch its manifesto for the November 7 general election.

According to him, the NDC is noted for copying policy plans formulated by the NPP and that it was clear the ruling party wanted the opposition party to launch its manifesto for it to copy it once again, adding that the NPP was not under any obligation to do so.

NDC Noise

Recently, the National Organiser of the NDC, Kofi Adams, claimed that the NPP had adopted a strategy to ‘shop’ for ideas from the ruling party and so that was why it had not launched its manifesto.

He had said it was outrageous for an opposition party to delay its manifesto until an incumbent launched its, saying, “Up till now, the NPP cannot come out with their manifesto so they have no message for the electorate. They [NPP] are just waiting to counter what the NDC will be doing. They are all over shopping for ideas...

“The opposition party (NPP) has no programme, no ideas, nothing for this country. They are just shoppers of ideas,” he added.

NDC Plagiarism

However, the NPP’s Campaign Manager, Mr Mac Manu, hit back denying the NDC’s claims and said it was rather the ruling party that had been plagiarising NPP’s campaign messages without due credit and added that they (NPP) would delay the release of the manifesto.

He said the decision was taken because of what happened in 2008 and 2012 when the party’s policies were ‘doctored’ and adopted by the NDC, citing the party’s flagship development agenda for the people of the three northern regions as well as the free senior high school (SHS) policy which were ‘stolen’ by the NDC, who ended up doing a very poor execution of those programmes.

“We cannot sit down and repeat that same mistake we did in 2008 in 2016,” he told Joy FM yesterday.

Sector Committees

Mr Mac Manu, a former NPP National Chairman, said the party had already inaugurated sector committees to draw the 2016 manifesto but added that it was not under compulsion to make its policies known to the public.

He said that the November elections would be a referendum on the performance of President John Mahama and his NDC government, saying, “The good people of Ghana are saying for the eight years, tell us what you have done with the oil money; tell us what you have done with the agriculture sector; tell us what you have done with the electricity and electricity bills. That is what is on the table now.”

Declaration Of Results

The Campaign Manager said he did not say the opposition party would declare results of the crucial November elections.

He said rather, he had told NPP supporters in the Western Region at a Tertiary Education Students Confederacy (TESCON) programme that the party would collate all the results as done by almost every stakeholder during general election.

Addressing TESCON members during the handing over ceremony of the old T-Poly TESCON executives to the incoming ones in Takoradi, Mr Mac Manu was quoted as saying that the NPP was going to declare results of the elections on November 7.

He said the NPP had no intention to defy the Electoral Commission (EC) and go ahead to declare its own election results, but asserted that the party would do a parallel collation of the results, saying, “We are going to collate our own parallel results; what we call parallel vote tabulation.”

Mr Mac Manu said, “...for the first time, we expect the Electoral Commission to post results at every polling station when it is declared by the presiding officers.

“So we will take all the 29,000 polling station results declared by the Electoral Commission’s own presiding officers and collate our own parallel results to compare with what the EC is declaring.”

He said collation of election results was not alien to Ghana’s political landscape because it was something the NPP and some civil society organisations had done before.

“We have always been collating our own parallel results and we are not the only one. CODEO [The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers] does it. Other NGOs and civil societies also collate results; parallel results we call it.”