The ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) is planning to peg the filing fee for presidential aspirants at ¢650 million.

The Enquirer newspaper said it has intercepted confidential memos from the NPP's headquarters requesting their aspirants to cough such colossal amount of money.

When The Enquirer contacted the Chairman for the Finance Committee, Mr. Adu-Gyamfi he confirmed the details of the Memo but insisted the proposal is still at the consideration stage at the national level of the party.

Meanwhile, the summation of the salaries of each Minister since they took office from 2001 till December 2008 (thus if they all remain ministers till 2008 ) does not even add up to the filing fee. It totals about ¢374,400 million.

What this means is that if all the minister-aspirants did not touch their salaries since they took up their ministerial portfolios in 2001 till 2008, they will still need ¢275 million more to be able to pay their filing fee to contest.

Their entire salary since 2001 to 2008 represents only 57.6% of the filing fee. If they had been saving all their salaries since 2001 they would still have to raise ¢275 million representing 42.4% of their salaries.

The secret memo dated June 5, 2007 and signed by Mr. Adu-Gyamfi, and sent to the office of the National Chairman, Mr. Peter Mac Manu, made the proposal with reasons attached to the amount mentioned.

According to the document, the upcommg congress in December offers the NPP the greatest platform to raise enough resources for the party, as far as the 2008 Presidential and Parliamentary elections are concerned.

"The Finance Committee, very mindful of this great responsibility, has decided to use this family competition to raise funds to meet the attendant expenditures associated with a congress of this nature," the memo said.

The document claims enough resources are needed to organize a successful congress and have some reserve resources to kick-start the 2008 campaign, to ensure a victorious and successful 2008 elections.

Giving the break down of the ¢650 million, the Finance Committee Chairman said the party is expecting each candidate to pay as much as ¢20 million to pick a form at the NPP headquarters.

The prospective presidential candidate is supposed to pay a filing fee of ¢200 million, which is not part of what is paid as the fee for the form.

The Finance Committee also wants each of the candidates to be nominated by one NPP card-bearing member from each of our ten regions at a nomination fee of ¢20 million each totaling ¢200 million.

Candidates according to the Memo are also expected to have their forms seconded by a member each from all the 230 constituencies, with each paying ¢1 million, bringing the total amount to ¢230 million.

The content of this document brings to a close a controversy surrounding how much candidates are supposed to pay.

Credit: The Enquirer