NPP Elects Presidential Candidate In November 2023, Parliamentary January 2024
The National Council of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is planning to hold its conference to elect flagbearer for the 2024 presidential elections in November 2023.
The Council also decided that the ruling party will conduct its parliamentary primaries to elect parliamentary candidates for constituencies where it has sitting Members of Parliament in January 2024.
The decision was taken after National Council meeting held at the Alisa Hotel, Accra over the weekend.
The party in the 8th Parliament has one hundred and thirty-seven (137) seats with the NDC winning the same number of seats.
The independent MP for the Fomena Constituency however works with the NPP Caucus, which brings the number of the majority caucus to 138.
On “orphan constituencies” (parliamentary seats occupied by the opposition), the National Council meeting could not decide on conclusive timelines, however, primaries to elect parliamentary candidates for such constituencies are largely expected to be held in April 2023.
There are currently one hundred and thirty-six (136) orphan constituencies except for the Assin North Constituency seat which is technically vacant because of a Supreme Court injunction on the sitting NDC MP stopping him from holding himself out as an MP.
The case is however pending at the High Court.
Ahead of the National Council meeting, some NPP Members of Parliament advocated for the party’s presidential and parliamentary (sitting MPs) primaries to take place at the same time.
However, the National Council decided that the presidential primaries should take place in November 2023, 13 months before the 2024 elections, while the parliamentary primaries for sitting MPs take place in January 2024, 11 months before the general election.
Pending Elections
The National Council in their deliberations directed that elections held in the Akwatia Constituency, from the polling station level through to the constituency executives’ level, should be conducted all over again.
Concerning the Sunyani East Constituency elections, the National Council decided to constitute a committee to investigate how the elections were conducted at the constituency from the polling station upwards and to ascertain if indeed, the elections were held at all.
Internal Polls
The NPP from 19 February through to 16 July 2022, conducted its internal elections.
The party during this period elected polling station, constituency, and regional and national executives.
The polling station-level elections were held from February 19 to March 5, 2022, while the electoral area elections took place from March 18 to March 20, 2022.
The constituency executive elections were held at the Constituency Annual Delegates Conference which was supervised by Constituency Election Committees between April 22 and April 24, 2022.
The regional executive elections and for that matter the Regional Annual Delegates Conference were held between 20 and 22 May 2022, and it was supervised by the Regional Election Committees.
The last election held was the National Executive elections. It was conducted during the party’s Annual National Delegates Conference which took place from 14 to 16 July 2022 at the Accra Sports Stadium and it was supervised by a National Elections Committee.