Members of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) who wish to register with the party at the various branch levels are expected to pay GH¢1 before they are issued with the party’s identification (ID) card, as part of its re-organization exercise.
This was revealed by former President John Dramani Mahama when he was addressing hundreds of NDC supporters at Tarkwa in the Western Region at the end of a ‘unity walk’ organized by the party last Saturday.
“We are about to start branch registration exercise. Just submit two passport-size pictures and an ID card to enable you register. Then you will pay a registration fee of GH¢1 before you will be given your party ID card,” he announced.
It would be recalled that the Prof. Kwesi Botchwey post-election review committee had recommended the scrapping of the NDC’s biometric register, which was compiled prior to the 2016 general election, because of its fraudulent nature.
The NDC later admitted that its biometric register – which it spent millions of Ghana cedis to compile – lacked integrity and credibility and therefore could not be relied upon for any meaningful internal elections.
The leadership of the party therefore decided to throw away the register and start a new process of registering the members manually.
Former President Mahama told the NDC supporters that the biometric register was one of the causes of the party’s defeat in the 2016 elections as it was not credible, asserting that some members of the ‘elephant party’ [referring to the then opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP)] managed to get their names on the NDC register.
“We will put the register we used in 2016 away and create a new one. We are compiling all the names at the branch levels so no one should go to the regional or national headquarters for registration.
“After that we will have what we call register auditing at all the branches to make sure that those who registered are truly members of the NDC,” he added.
Mr Mahama indicated that after the registration, there would be election of nine-member branch executives after which the party would elect its constituency executives.
He added that in mid next year the party would elect its national executives and then proceed to vote for its presidential candidate in November, 2018.
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(Selorm) | 
(Nana Kwesi)