The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has agreed with one of its aggrieved members who dragged the party to court, to scrap the entire election guidelines for the National and Regional elections, Citi News has gathered.
The decision forms part of an out of court settlement reached with a member of the party, Linus Njonola who was seeking an interlocutory injunction on the elections.
An election committee is expected to be set up to supervise the impending elections.
Njonolah Linus dragged the NDC and its executives to court for allegedly overstaying their mandated tenure of office.
According to him, the executives were using their authority to disqualify interested party members of the NDC from taking part in the impending elections.
[contextly_sidebar id=”CGIv6cjpPonUZld1z5m57RpvRGxhjXos”]Njonolah, who is the immediate past President of Tertiary Institution Network (TEIN) of the party at Akrokerri College of Education, also accused the executives of refusing to observe some provisions of the constitution.
The NDC as part of measures to resolve the case amicably as suggested by the court, postponed its regional elections and also scrapped a controversial clause in the party’s election guidelines.
But lawyer for Linus Njonolah, Felix Datsomor earlier insisted that they will not withdraw the case because they are contending the entire guidelines and not just the clause that said every candidate must have held an executive position at the constituency level.
He argued that “they [NDC] cannot decide on what to do without involving us. In the first place we are not just challenging the provision or the paragraph in the guideline that is not the only thing we are challenging.”
In response, Felix Datsomor confirmed to Citi News that the party has decided to scrapped the entire guidelines to pave way for the party to hold its elections.
“…if the guidelines that brought out all this dispute between my client and the party will be resolved by scrapping it in its entirety, my client is ready to allow the party to reopen nominations for whoever has been disqualified on the strength of those guidelines to have the entire elections reopened for them to also pick their forms and contest the various positions of the party,” Datsomor said.
The two parties are expected in court on Monday to present their agreement before the court for adoption.
Per the earlier decision, the General Secretary of the NDC Asiedu Nketia, had said that the party will re-open nominations at the regional level for five days to allow for others who were otherwise disqualified from contesting to also file their nomination.
By: Marian Efe Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana