The campaign team of John Mahama has expressed disappointment over the exclusion of former President John Mahama from a recent meeting involving the party’s Council of Elders, some aspirants and representatives of the party’s executive committee.
The team in a statement signed by the spokesperson for John Mahama’s campaign, James Agyenim-Boateng said the development appears to suggest that the campaign to lead the party into the 2020 polls is one of eight aspirants against John Mahama, and not a competition among the individual flagbearer hopefuls.
Eight flagbearer hopefuls of the NDC, excluding former President John Mahama, on Thursday met with the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party, and the Council of Elders, due to the recent misunderstanding that has ensued over the filing and nomination fees.
The meeting was at the behest of the Council of Elders who appear to serve as mediators between the flagbearer hopefuls and the NEC.
The flagbearer hopefuls had been protesting the committee’s decision to charge each aspirant GH¢420,000 as filing and nomination fee, while the NEC justified the amount.
This compelled the concerned flagbearer aspirants to petition the Council of Elders over the matter, but the John Mahama campaign team believes it was unfair for him not to be included in the meeting although he has not publicly protested over the earlier guidelines for the upcoming elections as he was the first person to pick nomination forms.
Commenting on the intervention of the Council of Elders to extend the date for the presidential primaries from January 19 to January 26, the Mahama campaign team said such decisions should be taken with consideration of giving the elected flagbearer ample time to campaign ahead of the 2020 Presidential elections.