NPP convenes in Buchanan today

The former ruling National Patriotic Party or NPP of former convicted President Charles Taylor is convening in Buchanan, Grand Bassa County to conduct its sixth biennial convention.

The National Secretary General of the NPP, Andrew Peters, said the sixth biennial convention is reconvening from February 17-18, 2016 consistent with the party’s by-laws and constitution and guidelines of the National Elections Commission.

“All selected delegates are therefore asked to assemble at the party’s national headquarters for departure to Buchanan,” the secretary general said in a communication.

The National Elections Commission on August 17, 2015, said it has not given any authorization to the embattled NPP to hold convention.

Last year, upon hearing about the holding of convention, the NEC advised the party to discontinue such planned convention because the Commission is yet to complete an investigation into misunderstanding within the party’s leadership.

For months the NPP has been engulfed in leadership crisis, with one group heading by Randolph Cooper, calling itself interim leadership, but the Theophilius C. Gould leadership considers such interim body as illegitimate, while the so-called interim leadership accused the Gould’s leadership of overstaying.

The Buchanan convention is expected to put the internal wrangling to rest and elect a leadership that will take the party to elections in 2017. Meanwhile, the secretariat of the NPP has not been able to release names of contestants for today’s convention. But it is believed that those who participated in the past reportedly ‘illegal’ convention may be the ones in the race.

By E. J. Nathaniel Daygbor-Edited by Jonathan Browne