Ahead of Saturday`s crucial conference

ANTO BREAKS OWN COVENANT
… Canvasses votes for Jake, execs mad over decision
Posted: The Chronicle |Thursday, February 25, 2010

By Charles Takyi - Boadu

The Ashanti Regional Chairman of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) may after all not be committed to his much-touted call for neutrality and equal treatment for aspirants contesting for various positions in the party, as he has sought to portray.

At a meeting with his own regional executives at the popular Royal Park Chinese Restaurant, near Ahodwo in Kumasi somewhere last week, Mr. Fredrick Fredua Anto was said to have canvassed for votes for Mr. Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, who is running for the national chairmanship position of the party, alongside others, including Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobbey, Steve Ntim, Felix Owusu Agyapong, and Sammy Crabbe.

This was when he introduced Jake to the executives, and told them that he has had the opportunity of working with Jake since the year 2000 to date, and that he could attest to his competence and abilities, and thus endorses his candidature.

Mr. Anto has confirmed to The Chronicle that he, together with the executives, met Jake at the said hotel when the latter was seeking to sell himself to them.

Though the Regional Chairman admitted telling the executives that Ntim was his long-standing friend, he said, he did not categorically ask them not to vote for him, and that he would also not vote for him.

According to him, the only thing he told them was, “they should vote for a very experienced person, and somebody who can do the job.”

“I told them the issue is not about friendship, because Ntim is also my friend, but my decision was based purely on competence,” he said, emphasising, “I’ve sat on the National Council with him before. When I was the chairman, he was also the first vice chairman, and I said I am going to vote, based on competence, not on friendship, that is what I told everybody to do.”

This virtual turn-around by Mr. Anto has made some of his own executives become jittery about his commitment to his acclaimed ‘principle’ of neutrality and unity among contestants to all positions in the party.

Some of them, who confided in the paper, have thus resolved to defy his instructions and campaign for their choice of candidates, since according to them, they were ‘fooled’ into believing his words.

On his part, Jake, who was said to have gone into the region in the company of his newly-employed interpreter, one Achamfuor, was said to have told the executives that he single-handedly fought for the Nasara Club to be given voting rights in the NPP, and also prided himself on bringing then candidate Kufuor to power in the year 2000.

With this, he was said to have expressed optimism that when given the mandate to assume the position of national chairman, he would be able to return the party to power come 2012, and therefore asked the executives to bless him with the opportunity.

Mr Anto promised to personally stay clear of campaigning for or against any of the individuals eying various positions in the party, and asked his regional and constituency executives to follow suit.