Mr Thomas Nuako Ward-Brew, Presidential Candidate of the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) for Election 2008, has reprimanded the People’s National Convention (PNC) for daring to challenge his stance against financial assistance offered to four presidential candidates in the elections.

"PNC, in spite of the support, failed to obtain even one per cent of valid votes cast in Election 2008.

Now they are talking from the roof top championing two per cent threshold for State Funding of political parties when bigger parties were proposing 0.5 per cent," he said.

Mr Ward-Brew said this in a sharp rebuttal to a submission made by the PNC at the official launch of the final report on Ghana's 2008 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in Accra by the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) in Accra.

Mr Henry Asante, the PNC representative, attempted to rebut Mr Ward-Brew's stance against the Institute of Economic Affairs' (IEA’s) position for organising Presidential and Vice Presidential debates for only four out of the eight candidates for Election 2008.

The DPP presidential candidate had submitted that the conduct of debate among four of the presidential candidates and their vice presidential candidates amounted to interfering in the electoral process by a non-governmental organisation.

Mr Ward-Brew expressed concern about the failure of CODEO to mention the irregularities in the report.

Mr Asante, however, defended IEA's stance, stressing that the institute used a criteria to select parties for funding and for participation in the debate.

He said the criteria, among other things, included performance of a party in an election and those with representatives in Parliament, a comment which irritated Mr Ward-Brew.

Professor Miranda Greenstreets, Co-Chair of CODEO, called the two political party leaders to order to ensure that the programme went on without further throwing of "Political Bullets".


Source: Daily Graphic