ASAMOA-TUTU CHALLENGES KWABENA ADJEI (Pg 14) 11-01-10

Story: Kofi Yeboah

AN ASPIRING chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr Austin Asamoa-Tutu, has called on delegates to the party’s national conference scheduled for Tamale at the weekend, to vote for him to guarantee victory for the party in Election 2012.
He said the task ahead required persons with experience, maturity, versatility, tenacity and fresh vigour to surmount, adding, “I am totally convinced that I am the right candidate to serve our great party as the chairman on a secure and safe path into a bright future”.
A former Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) Secretary for the Volta Region (1982-1984) and founder member of the NDC, Dr Asamoa-Tutu is counting on his wealth of experience in politics to reorganise and reinvigorate the party at all levels to ensure victory in Election 2012.
Sharing his aspirations with the Daily Graphic, he said he was predisposed as an experienced politician to unify the party and lead it to achieve great successes.
“I think people will listen to me. It depends on how you approach people”, he remarked confidently.
According to Dr Asamoa-Tutu, the vision to reorganise and reinvigorate the party would be powered by a party development fund to be established through internally-generated funds (IGF), as well as dues and levies from ministers of state, government appointees, NDC Members of Parliament (MPs) and all other party members.
He also intends to create an information and communication technology (ICT) database of all NDC members, linking the constituencies to the regions and the regions to the national level, with the view to enhancing effective administration.
Dr Asamoa-Tutu says he also has a strategy to identify and recognise the party’s foot soldiers, as well as empower them economically through the establishment of small-scale projects such as rice cultivation, for their benefit.
As a professional architect who also has the ability to speak Ewe, Twi, Ga, English, German, French and Slovene, Dr Asamoa-Tutu is confident that these assets will enable him to deliver on his promise.
Asked how he would deal with the challenge offered by the other contestants, particularly the incumbency advantage enjoyed by the current chairman, Dr Kwabena Adjei, the veteran politician said he had developed an effective strategy to stay on top of the contest.
Drawing deep inspiration from his campaign slogan, “Vote for change - Building and winning”, Dr Asamoa-Tutu paid glowing tribute to the current national executive of the party for standing firm through thick and thin while the party was in opposition, but he advised; “They should sit back and recuperate their lost energy and strength”.
Apart from serving as PNDC Secretary for the Volta Region during which he organised a regional development project seminar dubbed “Plans, Projects and Prospects”, Dr Asamoa-Tutu is a veteran in student and national politics.
He was a student leader at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and during his postgraduate studies in the former Yugoslavia and Germany between 1964 and 1978.
At the national level, Dr Asamoa-Tutu had been a social democratic long before the NDC claimed that political ideology, having contested on the ticket of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) in the 1979 general elections.
Since the founding of the NDC in 1992, he has remained a stalwart of the party, particularly in the Volta Region, and in the 2008 elections, he coordinated seven constituencies in the Volta Region, thus helping to ensure victory for the party.
As a professional architect, Dr Asamoa-Tutu has also played a pivotal role in the country’s development. The profile of projects undertaken by his firm, Design Forum, for the government, include the SSNIT Affordable Housing Project at Wa and the Dunkonaa Housing Project.
Furthermore, his company was lead consultants in a consortium that won the bid for the rehabilitation of the Electro-Volta House in Accra.
Dr Asamoa-Tutu holds a doctorate degree in Engineering from the Technical University of Munich, Germany (1977), Ingineur - Architect Diploma from the University of Ljubljana, Yugoslavia (1968) and Certificate in Fundamentals of Planning and Inter-disciplinary Planning from the Technical University of Braunschweig, West Germany.
From 2002 to 2004, he was an external examiner at the Faculty of Architecture at KNUST at both degree and postgraduate levels.