An aspirant in the just-ended New Patriotic Party (NPP) primaries, Eric Amankwa Blay, reacting to calls to return bicycles he took from delegates after his defeat, says they were not gifts.
There was drama at Assin North Constituency last weekend as the aspiring parliamentary candidate, Mr Blay, hounded delegates for some 250 bicycles he distributed ahead of the elections.
Following the incident, the party’s General Secretary, John Boadu, issued a stern warning to Mr Blay to return the bicycles or be sacked from the party.
However, Mr Blay maintains the motive behind the distribution of the bicycles was for the 2020 campaign if he won.
“The thing is that when I was going round with my campaign team last year, we found out that we needed to walk from one village to the other during campaigns in the electoral areas; so we planned to give them bicycles to make it easy.
“We came back and sat down with my financiers and at the end of the day they also agreed that we have to give bicycles to all the delegates,” Mr Amankwa said.
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Speaking in an interview on Accra-based Starr FM, he stressed there were underlying terms and conditions which delegates agreed to prior to the distribution.
“The condition was that if I win then you take the bicycles but as for the transportation and a little bit of token it will be given to you; that was the condition.
“So it was a winning bonus, not a gift or a donation because you know that if you are going to play a match and at the end of the day you lose you don’t pay losing bonus but a winning bonus and they also understood it,” he explained.