The Second Vice Chairperson of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), Susan Adu Amankwah, has rejected claims that the party’s newly elected flagbearer, Ivor Greenstreet, indulged in vote buying during Saturday’s congress.
Ivor Greenstreet was over the weekend elected as the presidential candidate for the CPP for the elections in November this year.
He polled 64.7% of the total votes while his main contender, Samia Nkrumah had about 29% of the votes.
[contextly_sidebar id=”DSWKhiWxYxhlXuFirmPfMfkO4kZEXj1X”]Following her defeat, Samia Nkrumah accused Ivor Greenstreet of influencing the CPP delegates with cash amounts of between GHc200 and GHc500.
But speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Monday, the CPP Second Vice Chair, Susan Adu Amankwah, said the defeated aspirant made those claims out of pain and further described it as “hogwash.”
“That is a lot of hogwash, really vote buying? I don’t want to go into that direction but that vote buying issue is hogwash and if we want to get dirty some of us will. You see…losing election is painful, you have no idea, you invest your emotion, physical strength and your financial strength and when you lose you are tempted to say all sorts of things. So I will take it that it is coming out of a certain hurt but otherwise it is just a shower grid,” she argued.
Lick your wounds
She also admonished Samia to get over with her loss and rally behind Ivor Greenstreet to enable the party have a united front for the November polls.
“Some of us think Green is the best thing [to have happened to the CPP] because he has not been a very divisive character. He is very neutral and I hope that the Samia group would see the bigger picture of a better and brighter CPP and say that our candidate may have lost but this is who the party has chosen and we will probably do our homework better and come again. If they do that they will win the respect of others. It is to them to lick their wounds, pick themselves up and say we are going to support this flagbearer no matter what,” she added.
Nkrumaist
On claims that the CPP was trying to build the party around the children of late Dr. Nkrumah, Susan Adu Amankwah said that was not their aim.
She explained that “you don’t have to be a biological child of Nkrumah to be Nkrumaist. Was this party not in existence before Samia? When she became a parliamentary candidate eight years ago, did this party not exist before 8 years? Do you have to be a biological child of Nkrumah before you preach his gospel?”
“Being a daughter of Nkrumah is not a-be-it all. Do we vote for people because they are somebody’s daughter? I don’t think that it’s a genetic thing, it’s a mind thing. I don’t think she will be more Nkrumaist than any other person in the party,” she argued.
Ivor has grassroots appeal
The second vice chair further eulogized Ivor Greenstreet by saying “he brings a certain grassroots appeal. He speaks their language, he talks their talk, he walks their walk and they can associate with that and that is the mass of the people. He is also highborn so he can move in the elite class and talk to them and make sense. So he cuts across.”
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana