A National Executive Committee meeting of the governing New Patriotic Party to deliberate on the pending party’s presidential and parliamentary primaries has ended inconclusively.
There have been calls on the leadership of the party to hold early elections, but others want the party to stick to its constitution of electing a flagbearer 12 months to the general elections when the party is in power.
Thursday’s meeting was supposed to consider these opinions and set a date for the primaries, but it was unable to do so.
Present at the meeting were President Nana Akufo-Addo, Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, as well as the Chief of Staff, some Members of Parliament and some presidential hopefuls, Newstitbits gathered.
But after about five hours of deliberations, the meeting ended in a stalemate.
Earlier reports had indicated that the party had set November 2023 to elect its presidential candidate, January 2024 to elect parliamentary candidates for constituencies without sitting NPP Members of Parliament and April 2024 for constituencies with sitting NPP MPs.
The General Secretary of the party, Justin Frimpong Koduah, later told journalists that the meeting resolved to do more consultations on the wayforward.
“I am sorry to disappoint you that from Steering Committee through to NEC and National Council (NC) it has been resolved that as a party, we need to do further consultation on the timelines for the presidential and parliamentary elections and within the shortest time possible, we will come out with the timelines for our presidential and parliamentary elections,” he said.
“As a party, we believe in consensus building and we recognise the views of each stakeholder in our deliberations so we want to come out with a date that is built on consensus and once that is done, we will tell you when the timelines will come,” Mr Koduah stated.