The New Patriotic Party General Secretary says he almost lost his temper over a group of ‘indisciplined’ party youths protesting alleged manipulation of the party’s parliamentary nomination processes. Calling on the aggrieved to adopt proper behaviour in seeking redress, Ohene Ntow said current methods adopted by demonstrating youths particularly in Accra bother on indiscipline and are totally unacceptable. “The methods some of them are using are totally unacceptable, totally improper. I almost lost my temper with a group of them who had come to the party headquarters beating drums and beating empty cans and shouting and so on…” He told Citi FM that the particular group were protesting alleged reopening of nomination for the sitting NPP MP for Ayawaso West Wuogon Constituency, Hon Frema Osei Opare, who is alleged to have failed to file any interest when nominations closed. The group were insisting that they would not allow the MP’s re-entry into the race. Nana Ohene Ntow said he was not entirely surprised at the ‘heckling’, particularly in an election year, but he admitted that the situation appears to have escalated in the party. He explained that being a party in power and with big prospects of retaining power at the 2008 polls, many are those who are seeking opportunities to develop their political careers, however, those private desires need to be balanced against the party’s strategic objectives. “I think the bottom line of this kind of situation is where the national party leadership is trying to balance larger party strategic objectives which demands that for example, you have a very experienced member of parliament who plays a very key role in government, who is alleged to be unpopular or to have become unpopular or to have some problems on the ground, sometimes what you want to do is to go into the merits of the that is being made against this MP for example and sometimes you might just find that this is really not a widespread sentiment. People may like you, people may not like you, they might just pick on a small issue and blow it out of proportion for personal reasons sometimes or factional reasons. Sometimes somebody also want to push their friend or their favourite and they try and make a big case against a very experienced MP. People at the grassroots need to understand some of these objectives and that is where I think we need to do a very careful balancing act in order not to run ourselves into unnecessary difficulty. Obviously these are not very simple situations, they are quite difficult sometimes they are very complicated and delicate.” The party is currently vetting aspiring parliamentary candidates nationwide and already the process has witnessed various protests. Author: Isaac Yeboah