A flagbearer hopeful of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) Alban Babgin has expressed outrage with the GHS400,000 filing fee expected to be paid by all flagbearer hopefuls of the party.
All male flagbearer aspirants of the NDC are expected to cough up GHS400,000 as filing fee while their female counterparts and persons with disability pay GHS200,000 and GHS150,000 respectively. Their nomination form is going for GHS20, 000.
Speaking about the development, Mr Bagbin told Valentina Ofori Afriyie on 505 on Class91.3FM that the exorbitant fee is at variance with the party’s social democratic principles.
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He said all flagbearer aspirants were “shocked” when they heard the news and will release a joint statement on Friday 30 November 2018 to express their reservations.
The Second Deputy Speaker of parliament said: “We think that this is in consonance with our belief as a social democratic party. It seems NDC is losing its values, losing all its principles and that accounted for what happened in 2016.
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“Those of us who have committed our lives to the party since its formation will not tolerate any auctioning of the party to any money bags in our society. We’ll not tolerate it, I repeat that we’ll not tolerate any auctioning of the party to any money bag in our society.
“There will be an emergency meeting and so by [today], there should be a collective statement. I’m outraged but a number of them [aspirants] have gotten in touch with me and they have expressed outraged about what they’ve heard. In fact, it’s shocking to many. Even if they were increasing it by 100 percent it would have gone to GHS200,000 not GHS400,000”.
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Meanwhile General Secretary of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia has defended the amount involved in contesting for the flagbearer position.
He stated that the party needs to raise funds to organise its primaries and aspirants should have no issues coughing up the said amount.