Pollster Ben Ephson has cautioned the ruling new Patriotic Party that it could be heaping fire unto its bosom if it went ahead to hand-pick parliamentary candidates in constituencies. In a report he co-authored with a staff on his The Daily Dispatch newspaper, Kwamina Kum, he said the mode, described variously as ‘imposition’ or ‘consensus’ primarily deprives party activists the opportunity of electing their parliamentary candidates through constituency primaries. The report said the NPP has started the vetting of prospective persons who want to be the party's parliamentary candidates in the NPP's 98 'orphan' constituencies, made up of constituencies the party lost to the NDC, Convention Peoples Party (CPP) or Peoples National Convention (PNC). The report said the NPP has decided not to allow primaries but rather, select candidates by consensus, while a good number of the persons wanting to be candidates are District Chief Executives (DCEs). “All of the interested persons would have invested some fair amount of resources in campaigning, to assess their strengths before picking up nomination forms and paying the appropriate filing fees. If the NPP, as a party knew they were not going to allow primaries, why did they open nominations?” The report said those who will not be selected by consensus are likely to be in two categories. “The first group will be those activists who, at the risk of being sanctioned by the NPP, would contest as independent candidates, diminishing further, the NPP's chances of defeating the various incumbent Members of Parliament. “The other group, the more 'sly' of the two, will be those who will grudgingly accept the outcome of the consensus selection but work quietly against the selected one. Members of this group, would like to prove that the party erred in not selecting them. An argument they are likely to use is that it is not an NPP constituency anyway, so why the fuss? What will happen if the NPP loses the seat again in 2008?” The report questioned what selection processes the NPP would likely adopt in NPP strongholds if the party was embarking on consensus in 'orphan' constituencies. “The danger is that it is going to increase the incidence of in-fighting among the constituency executives in such 'safe' constituencies. Such incidents occur when other leading activists in the constituencies concerned undermine the incumbent NPP Member of Parliament by trying to change the current constituency executives.” Source: The Daily Dispatch