Another Chief warns Of Political Consequences For NPP After An Insult By Party General Secretary

Following the invocation of ancestral curses on the Member of Parliament for Ahanta West, Ebenezer Kojo-Kum, and the proscription of his party from campaigning on Ahanta lands by the Chiefs of Lower Dixcove for besmirching them, another Chief has responded to insults by the ruling New Patriotic Party’s General Secretary with a hint on similar proscription.

The Omanhene of the Dormaa Traditional Area, Osagyefo Oseadeeyo Agyeman Badu II, warned John Buadu that campaign time will be a time of reckoning after the General Secretary called members of the National House of Chiefs “lawless” for cautioning the EC not to disenfranchise people with its decision to compile a new voters’ register.

“John Boadu leads a big party, he must be careful, as chiefs we don’t just get up and talk anyhow. We know our role and so we know what we are talking about. I have seen many regimes go and come but the Dormaa stool is still here. I witness that of Rawlings, Kufour, Prof Mills, John Mahama has come and gone and so will Nana Addo. Don’t they know they will also leave power at some point?

“How can John Boadu describe as lawless? We have invited but they don’t want to come and instead of people John Boadu to condemn it he’s rather insulting us. Well I know very soon they will be coming around for campaign and we will be here waiting for them,” the Dormaa Hene said on Accra based Power FM.

John Buadu, following in a strange new fashion in which the ruling NPP defends and responds to issues on behalf of the Electoral Commission, attacked the members of the national House of Chiefs after the House has publicly cautioned the EC.

The House was constrained to issue a statement after the EC had spurned an invitation thrown to it to have a dialogue over its decision to compile a new voters register over which some Ghanaians had petitioned the House.

In a statement responding to the EC’s purported disrespect, it wrote that, “Central to the escalating tension is the decision of the Electoral Commission to compile a new voters register. Unfortunately, the EC failed to honour invitations to the National House of Chiefs, when our traditional leaders wanted the opportunity to promote dialogue in the interest of peace.

“We want to call on the EC to make peaceful conduct of this year’s general elections its primary objectives. It would require, among others, that no qualified Ghanaian is disenfranchised, and that the elections are free and fair,” the House of Chiefs said.

In response to this, Mr. John Buadu, said in an interview on Accra based Neat FM that the statement by the National House of chiefs warning the EC not to disenfranchise any Ghanaian in the upcoming voter registration exercise amounts to siding with the opposition.

 He adds that the subsequent attacks on the EC by the chiefs for failing to honour an invitation by them smacks of lawlessness.

Meanwhile, an intransigent EC has fixed June 30 as the date for the commencement of the compilation of a new voters register in spite of public resistance.

This is not the first time that members of the NPP have openly made statements that made chiefs feel denigrated. Last year, Chairman of the NPP, Freddy Blay, had described a call for accountability over Mr. Blay’s supposed donation of 275 buses to his party during an election for executives of the party as the blabbering of a palm wine drunk.

Just last week the Chiefs of Upper Dixcove invoked ancestral curses on the MP for Ahanta West, Kojo Kum and some people aligned to him for saying that the Paramount Chief of Ahanta, Obrempong Hima Dekyi  XIV, shoots off his mouth without thinking.

“We are calling on you the gods to come to the aid of Nananom. Some young men of the New Patriotic Party who are part of the incumbent MP campaign team have uttered insults on us. We are on this libation banning them from campaigning in any part of our lands,” Nana Kwesi Yankey noted whilst addressing the gods in a libation.