The fourth attempt at a New Patriotic Party (NPP) primary to elect a parliamentary candidate for the Suhum constituency in the Eastern region for the December general elections has ended in a stalemate.

The two aspirants, Frederick Opare-Ansah, the incumbent and Bryan Acheampong, an IT consultant, tied at 51 ballots each after polling on Wednesday.

That leaves the party with yet another attempt after two earlier ones were disrupted and a third last week yielded another 51-51 results.

Nana Ohene Ntow, NPP General Secretary told Joy FM’s Akwasi Sarpong that per party constitution, there is no other choice than to run the primaries until a winner emerges.

“Our party constitution says that if in any internal election there is a tie, you run it until there is a winner. This is turning out to be a special case, we really haven’t had the occasion where you’ve run two times and you still get a tie so I think we are now being presented with a special case that we might have to look at but in the meantime we have our constitution to guide us for now and the constitution simply says that if you go for ten times and there is a tie, keep going until you break that deadlock.”

Joy News correspondent, Benjamin Henaku who attended the Suhum primary, said there was confusion when the incumbent, Opare-Ansah claimed he had been threatened.

He said a delegate had brought a phone to Opare-Ansah, urging him to speak to a person at the other end supposed to be somewhere in the UK.

After a brief period on the phone, Opare-Ansah turned in search of whoever had brought him the phone, claiming the person at the other end was threatening him and that he would get to the bottom of the matter. A policeman who heard the MP’s comment asked him to withdraw it, but Opare-Ansah reprimanded him, saying being a police officer it was his duty to investigate the matter rather than his posturing, accusing him of showing ‘his colours’.

Opare-Ansah and Bryan Acheampong previously disputed the eligibility of some of the delegates, leading to the stalling of the first two attempts at the primary.



Author: Isaac Yeboah