We’ll impress on Bagbin to accept forms – Constituents

David Dzawara Baya, the leader of the group that picked the National Democratic Congress’ presidential nomination forms for Alban Bagbin says they will urge him to accept the forms despite his stance.

Mr. Bagbin who’s the Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament and a flagbearer hopeful of the NDC refused to pick the nomination forms Tuesday on grounds that the process leading to the exercise breached certain aspects of the party’s constitution.

However, his constituents from Nadowli Kaleo mobilized themselves and picked the forms in his stead.

“I’m not associated with this. It’s not on my authority and I disregard it,” Mr. Bagbin told Starr News moments after the forms were picked in his name Tuesday.

But speaking on Morning Starr Wednesday, Mr. Dzawara Baya said they will as constituency meet with Mr. Bagbin and enumerate to him in lucid language why he should accept their form.

“This morning we are meeting as a group...to go to him, tell him what we did, present it to him and then urge him on to go through the other processes to the last hour,” he told Morning Starr host Francis Abban.

“In our traditional setup where you have to choose a chief, you look among the royals and you select the one that’s strong, capable, has integrity and principle. That’s what Alban Bagbin carries with him. So, we know that he is competent, he’s able to lead our great NDC party into election 2020.

“So, even though, he is not very willing to go ahead because they have put some issues before the National Executives Committee, we said no, we must go ahead and pick the forms when those issues are resolved as being a human being we would appeal to his conscience again and then he will go ahead and continue with the process,” he added.

Stephen Atubiga and Sylvester Mensah also picked forms to contest the presidential primaries of the party, bringing the number of candidates who had picked forms to contest the race to five after former President John Mahama and Professor Joshua Alabi picked theirs earlier.

Picking forms illegal

According to Mr. Bagbin, the failure of the newly elected national executives of the NDC to consult the party’s Council of Elders in deciding the guidelines for the flagbearer contest rendered the entire process illegal.

“We believe that the process that they have put in place is offending a number of our values, principles and even the provisions of our constitution…and so we have put that across and we are awaiting the response of the Council of elders,” he told Starr News’ Regina Borley Bortey earlier Tuesday.

“There’s a legal issue there. A legal issue that we believed has rendered all the process null and void. It is very clear in our constitution that the guidelines for the flagbearership race will have to be done in consultation with the Council of elders.

“We know that. And so, if you don’t do that and you proceed to do what you know is unlawful it means that all that process is null and void.

“And that’s the difficulty in going to pick the forms because we ourselves will be participating in an unlawful process. That’s the main reason why I am not picking the forms,” he added.