Kwabena Adjei Angry Over NDC Vote Buying

The National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr Kwabena Adjei has accused his main opponent in the party�s chairmanship race, Kofi Portuphy of inducing delegates with rice, cooking oil, mattresses, among others. �My competitors can distribute rice and cooking oil, but it is not my pedigree to be distributing goodies because I know the history of this noble party,� the NDC chairman told members of the United Cadres Front (UCF) at a press soiree in Accra. Even though the NDC has not opened nominations, Dr Adjei is being challenged by Kofi Portuphy, National Coordinator of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) and a Vice Chairman of the party for the chairmanship position. NADMO is custodian of relief items such as rice, mats, mattresses, cooking oil, roofing sheets among other items. The programme was attended by NDC stalwarts like Antwi Bosiako-Sekyere, Deputy Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Nii Notey-Dua, former Deputy Minister for Youth and Sports and immediate-past MP for Ledzekuku, Piesie Antoh, a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party, Steven Akwetey, a contender in the Greater Accra Regional NDC chairmanship race, Dr David Percy and Affail Monney, President of Ghana Journalists Association (GJA). The national chairman stated categorically that he needed people with similar thinking to move the nation and the NDC forward. �I won�t join in the distribution of rice and cooking oil. Democracy had allowed conservatives to infiltrate the rank and file of the party, people who do not believe in the revolution are taking centre stage in the party and are perpetuating all manner of tactics alien to the tenets of the AFRC/PNDC revolution, Dr Adjei noted. He stressed that he would mobilize people with similar philosophy to fight the canker in the party. He mentioned that people, who claim to be party grassroot members, were edging him out of the party with strange demands. He said the enemies within the party who are bent on dividing their ranks should be flushed out. ��There�s an enemy outside there; in fact not only outside there but the enemy within. �If you divide your rank, the enemy will get you straight and I am not going to be the person who divides you, I�m going to be the person who�ll bring you together to get the enemy out,� he said. He commended members of the cadre front for showing exemplary leadership and assisting the party to propagate its ideologies. Whether the hardliners in the party like it or not, Jerry Rawlings remains the founder of the NDC and they cannot take that away from him, he stated. I know where the party came from because at the time of the June 4, 1979 coup, I was a lecturer at the University of Ghana and I saw how people struggled to have the revolution work, he stated. �If people have forgotten, I have not and I quote it to them that the distribution of rice and cooking oil is not the pedigree of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).�