The Senior Programmes Officer for the Centre of Democratic Development (CCD-Ghana) Paul Aborampah Mensah has cautioned the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to tread carefully on its decision to change the party’s leadership in Parliament.
Mr Aborampah said the NDC should have considered the ethnic sentiments of some of the supporters of the previous leaders in Parliament before embarking on the decision to replace them.
“We have to be very cautious in order not to read ethnic sentiments in every decision that we take. If you watch television yesterday, you would realise the NDC supporters were reading meaning into the decision.”
“Their sentiments were not that the party has replaced competent people, but their sentiments were such that their men from the Dagbon tradition have been sacked and some of them threatened not to receive the leadership of the NDC or attack them when they enter Tamale.
“So if they don’t handle it carefully it is not going to be an issue of reshuffling people in parliament…but my worry is the ethnocisation of the issues at this time and the sentiments expressed by the people of Tamale,” Mr Aborampah said on the Citi Prime News on Wednesday, January 25.
Mr Aborampah’s comments come after NDC supporters in the Tamale South constituency on Tuesday besieged the party’s office demanding the immediate reversal of the decision to replace Haruna Iddrisu as the Minority Leader with Cassiel Ato Forson.
On Wednesday, some party supporters in the Asawase constituency in the Ashanti region also massed up at the party office demanding the reinstatement of Minority Whip, Muntaka Mubarak who has also been replaced by the party with Governs Kwame Agbodza.
Meanwhile, the NDC has justified the shake-up in its leadership in Parliament despite criticisms from its own members. The party said the decision is apt and works best for collective other than individual interests.
The General Secretary of the NDC, Fiifi Kwetey while speaking on Eyewitness News discredited such assertions insisting that those who mattered were contacted for the necessary inputs.
“This decision was taken after wide consultation. If you look at the apex leadership of the party, that consultation was done. In terms of parliamentary, the group that is widely consulted, that consultation has been done.”
