The National Democratic Congress (NDC) is happy with the huge interest by party members in the Ashanti Region for the impending\u00a0parliamentary primaries.<\/p>\n
At least this is the indication being given by the General Secretary of the party, Johnson Asiedu Nketia.<\/p>\n
He made the revelation in an interview with Citi News<\/strong> on Thursday when the party closed nomination for aspirants hoping to contest in the parliamentary and presidential primaries slated for November 7.<\/p>\n [contextly_sidebar id=”hhuFns8c4Lp9soD3yvPceue0ZFcaZw61″]\u201cThis year the process has been again very much subscribed in the Ashanti Region, we are pleasantly surprised about that because in the previous years, even in years that we won election we had some difficulty recruiting candidates for some constituencies in the region,\u201d a startled Asiedu Nketia remarked.<\/p>\n \u201cAshanti, everybody knows that it is the stronghold of the main opposition party and the level of intimidation in some of the constituencies when you don\u2019t belong to their party tends to scare potential candidates,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Filing of nomination forms for the various aspirants ended on Thursday, September 10 2015, across the country with the exception of the Ashanti Region which commenced the process a week later, compared to other regions.<\/p>\n Commenting on the way forward for the electoral process after the closing of nominations, the NDC scribe also said\u00a0the executives seek to adopt \u2018a one stop shop vetting\u2019 for aspirants in this year\u2019s primaries.<\/p>\n \u201cThis year we are not likely to stagger the vetting where the constituency concludes their vetting then submit the shortlisted candidates to the region for onward submission to the \u00a0national executives.\u00a0We will do a one stop shop vetting where you have representatives of constituencies, regional and national in every region,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Asiedu Nketia further stated that the party has provided alternative arrangements for aspirants that were\u00a0negatively affected by the decision by some regional executives asking them to fulfill some party payments before being served with nomination forms.<\/p>\n Aspirants within the Volta and some constituencies in the Greater Accra regions were made to pay extra monies<\/a><\/strong><\/span> as development levies. But issues relating to such issues according to Mr. Nketia have been adequately addressed.<\/p>\n