Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, one of the five presidential hopefuls of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has spoken about his forceful removal from office as General Secretary of the party.
The engineer was removed together with the national chairman Paul Afoko and third vice chairman Sammy Crabbe in the run up to the 2016 general election.
The party and loyalists of former President Akufo-Addo, often credit their victory in that election partly to standing on their grounds to remove the three.
The illegality was perpetuated under Akufo-Addo who was then the opposition leader, following series of unsubstantiated allegations against them.
Agyapong, who was ridiculed and hooted at, at the time when he visited the national headquarters at Asylum Down, in Accra, speaking to some delegates days ago, said the party should have itself to blame doe not speaking against injustice.
To his surprise, he said, no member was bold enough to speak against the act, making it look like it was a step in the right direction.
The onetime press secretary to former President John Kufuor, said this in a reaction to a question posed by delegates who expressed about growing indiscipline and weakness of the party.
He said the situation did not start today stressing that when it started showing its ugly head, the party members were quiet about it reason it has degenerated to this proportion.
“When I hear you ask this question I look at you in amazement. When we wanted to build a strong party, we had a strong general secretary and strong national chairman you all looked on as we were thrown out of office. Nobody did a thin, nobody did a thin. Why are we complaining about weak party? You are helped create a weak party, you helped create a weak party because everybody knows what I stand for. I have worked for Kufuor, people know me the president himself I was his serious campaign frontrunner he knows what I stand for, so he knows I am firm and I know that if I had been general secretary in 2017, there were things I will fight against. Maybe that was the reason why I was shunted away so unfortunately I had the mandate of the party at the time those who were there at the beck and call of the powers that be. I had the mandate and I was removed so the party was going to be weak”, he said in a video while addressing a group of delegates.
By Gifty Boateng