NPP vetting process not witch hunting exercise — Agyei

The Greater Accra Regional Directorate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has stated that the main goal of the recent vetting of its parliamentary hopefuls was not an exercise to witch hunt and disqualify people.
It was to ensure that aspirants meet the qualification criterion spelt out by the 1992 constitution and the NPP constitution and that the disqualification tool would be applied in extreme cases, it said.
The Greater Accra Co-ordinator of the Parliamentary Vetting Committee, Mr Rexford Agyei, who was speaking to the Daily Graphic about the recent vetting, noted that the process also formed part of the moves to educate the aspirants on recent decisions governing the parliamentary primaries.
He added that if no aspirant was disqualified, according to the national and NPP constitutions, then the delegates should be the best judges to select the most suitable person according to their judgement.
Mr Agyie noted that in consonance with the demands of the party’s constitution, all the aspirants were made to sign an undertaking that in the event that they do not win parliamentary slot of the party, they will not contest the elections as independent candidates.
He added that another crucial undertaking that the aspirants were made to append their signatures to was that if they had dual citizenship they would denounce it a year to the general elections if they won as the parliamentary candidate for the party.
He added that the processes leading to the filing of the nomination was inherent with adequate checks and balances to ensure that people who were not qualified for the position were eliminated.
That, Mr Agyei said, included the endorsement of the nomination forms by the paid up and qualified members of the constituency, followed by endorsement by two executive from the constituency and same number from the region as well as the final endorsement by the General Secretary of the party.
He added that after procuring the forms, the hopefuls were also given documents containing the dos and don’ts of the processes and in most cases if the aspirants realised that they could not meet the standards they do not submit the forms.
According to Mr Agyei, the region had dispatched all the documents of vetting to the national office and that it was the national headquarters that had the final say about the eligibility or otherwise of the aspirants.
Article 94 (1) says that Subject to the provisions of this article, a person shall not be qualified to be a member of Parliament unless -(a) he is a citizen of Ghana, has attained the age of twenty-one years and is a registered voter; (b) he is resident in the constituency for which he stands as a candidate for election to Parliament or has resided there for a total period of not less than five years out of the ten years immediately preceding the election for which he stands, or he hails from that constituency; and (c) he has paid all his taxes or made arrangements satisfactory to the appropriate authority for the payment of his taxes.
(2) A person shall not be qualified to be a member of Parliament if he - (a) owes allegiance to a country other than Ghana; or (b) has been adjudged or otherwise declared- (i) bankrupt under any law in force in Ghana and has not been discharged or (ii) to be of unsound mind or is detained as a criminal lunatic under any law in force in Ghana; or (c) has been convicted - (i) for high crime under this Constitution or high treason or treason or for an offence involving the security of the State, fraud, dishonesty or moral turpitude; or (ii) for nay other offence punishable by death or by a sentence of not less than ten years.
According to the NPP’s constitution, Article 11 (1) states that No member shall be nominated or endorsed as the party’s candidate in any parliamentary election unless the member has been selected in accordance with the provisions of this constitution.
11 (4) a) is a known and active member of at least two years; is a registered member and a voter in the constituency which he or she seeks to represent, provided that in a appropriate cases the constituency executives committee may dispense with the requirements.