A private legal practitioner in the opposition National Democratic Congress, Lawyer Eric Delanyo Alifo has urged his party’s leadership to expedite the reform of the party’s branches.
In a social media statement, the party’s former parliamentary aspirant in the Volta region encouraged the party to quickly register new members on a limited registration basis to stimulate the party’s base.
He pleads with the party’s leadership to make ID cards available to all registered members who are willing to apply for them.
In a one-page statement, Lawyer Alifo has also encouraged the party to release a clear timetable for internal elections and to convey the party’s programs and actions to its membership in order to keep supporters up to date.
READ HIS FULL STATEMENT BELOW:
The NDC Leadership must be Proactive in Reorganizing the Branch Many people are becoming concerned.
These days, when we hear and see our national and regional executives on radio and TV, we want to hear them tell us more about the plans the party has to register new members, particularly those who were left out in the last registration of members at the branches; issue the new party ID cards to all members; organize new branches at the new polling stations that were created by the Electoral Commission for the 2020 general elections; and when we shall have new elections at the branches, constituency, region, and national level.
We can slow down on the bashing of Nana Akufo Addo and the NPP for a moment and tidy up our base and re-energize our rank and file for the upcoming battle of the 2024 general elections as a matter of urgency.
CURRENT REORGANIZATION STAGE
We understand that, currently, the old party ID cards are being replaced with new ones. However, enough of the new cards are not sent to the branches to be distributed to our members who may be holding money and ready to buy them.
The constituencies are supposed to pay for the cards upfront, and many of them are unable to find money to procure the cards, so they are falling back on the benevolence of some party members to help them buy the cards for distribution to our members for free, in some cases.
This is not helping very much because only a very small number of cards are usually obtained by them for distribution at a time.
At many branches, the few cards that have been provided by the constituencies through the kindness of a few individuals have not been distributed at all, or have not been distributed properly because they would go around only a few members.
As a result, in many branches, apart from the nine branch executives who have been issued with the new cards, the rest of the very few cards remain in the custody of some individual branch executives, who are hoping that they will receive more free cards to add before they begin to distribute them to only some members.
INFORMATION DEARTH
There is no real publicity going on anywhere, or in many places, about the replacement of the cards. This is known mainly to constituency executives and a few branch executives. Since the party did not plan to take the cards out to the branches and ask our members to come and get their old cards replaced for a small fee of GHC2.00, nobody saw the need to sensitize our members about the exercise and encourage as many of them as possible to find their GHC2.00 and come for the new cards.
As a result, many of our supporters are not aware at all that the party is replacing their old membership cards for GHC2.00.
Every now and then, our supporters are calling anyone they think is in a better position than them to have some information on when the new registration of members will be done and when branch elections will be held, and they are asking questions which many of us cannot answer because we also do not have the answers.
I must say, many are becoming very anxious, and perhaps impatient too, and it is time our topmost leadership woke up and got the ground properly energized. We are running very late, comrades.
Our elected executives are responsible and accountable to us, and we have every right to complain to them, about them, and call on them to respond to our grievances. I hope they will not treat the anxiety of our grassroots just like a usual rant, which must be ignored. We are in opposition and want to be more aggressive than those who are holding power and abusing it. Leadership must not fail us.
So stay tuned!
Eric Delanyo Alifo
