Play active roles in future elections-Mahama urges NDC professionals

Former President John Dramani Mahama has called on professionals and the elite within the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to play critical roles in future elections in the country.

He said NDC had a lot of intellectuals and professionals across every sector of the economy.

“The perception has always been that mass parties do not have intellectuals and academic firepower. I mean just a fraction of the members of the Pro Forum in this auditorium and the self-introductions that you made clearly shows that pound for pound, we have on the side of the NDC, sufficient intellectual and academic power to take on any party in this world, and we have proved it over the years,” he said.

Mr Mahama said at the annual conference of the NDC’s Professional Forum in Accra last Thursday

Expertise

Mr Mahama, made the call was the presidential candidate of the NDC in the 2020 elections, said a lot more expertise was required in many parts of the electoral process such as the collation of election results to enable the party to police and monitor the polls in order to ensure the process was free and fair.

He, therefore, called on members of the forum to make themselves available for the 2024 general election.

The former President urged party professionals with in-depth knowledge on Information Technology (IT) to offer their services to the party as and when the need arises.

“I mean a lot of you in your professional work have had to use Information Technology, (IT) and now IT is becoming very important in terms of transmitting results and getting results in good time to be able to undertake the political decision making that is needed. And so, we will expect that you will offer your services more to the party in these critical areas,” he appealed.

Electoral officers

Mr Mahama urged the NDC professionals not to shy away from becoming electoral officers during general elections.

He explained that opponents of the NDC took advantage of adverts by the Electoral Commission (EC).

“You must also not shy away from becoming officers of the EC. You have the qualification to be presiding officers and other electoral officers and our opponents have taken advantage of it.

“You will find that when the EC advertises, many of their people apply to become presiding officers and so they are the electoral officers and of course you know what kind of advantages that can give them.  When the opportunity arises, we must stand for elected positions and if you are capable and you believe that you can garner the support, nothing bars pro forum members from going for such positions and we must also get many of our executives who are professionals to join pro forum.”