Minority parties must meet to take a decision - RPD

Political page (Daily Graphic), December 13/2008

Story: Charles Benoni Okine

THE defeated presidential candidate of the Reformed Patriotic Democrats (RPD), Mr Kwabena Agyei, has stressed the need for the minority political parties to meet as soon as possible to take a collective decision on which of the two parties contesting the 2008 run-off on December 28, 2008 they should support.
He said taking individual decisions might not help the cause of Ghana, and expressed the hope that all the parties- the Conventions People’s Party (CPP), Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), Democratic People’s Party (DPP), and the People’s National Convention (PNC), would come together to decide.
Mr Adjei said this in a short telephone interview with the Daily Graphic on Thursday.
As the Electoral Commission (EC) announced on Wednesday, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the presidential candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), had 4,159,439 votes, representing 49.13 per cent of the valid votes cast.
Professor John Evans Atta Mills of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), polled 4,056,634, representing 47.92 per cent.
The results between the two parties had forced the polls into a second round, which is once again expected to be a crunch of a presidential election.
This is the second time in the Fourth Republic that a presidential election has failed to produce a clear winner in the first round.
In the 2000 presidential election, the then candidate John Agyekum Kufuor obtained 3,104,393 votes, representing 48.44 per cent of the 6,408,231 valid votes cast, while Professor Mills, the then Vice-President, polled 2,871,051, representing 44.80 of the total valid votes cast.
In the end the other minority parties ganged up against the NDC as they joined the NPP to dethrone the ruling government.
But it is not clear at this time what the decision of the minority parties would be this time.
According to Mr Adjei, the RPD had not taken a decision yet but was willing to be part of the others to collectively declare their position as to which one to support.