A member of the Tema West branch of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Bernard Anokye Appiah, has warned that the party stands to lose the constituency seat if it goes ahead to present the incumbent Member of Parliament (MP) for the area, Irene Naa Torshie Addo, for the 2016 parliamentary elections.
According to him, since the MP became the legislator for the area on the ticket of the party, the number of votes they have been garnering has been dwindling election by election.
He explained that in 1996, when the party went into the election under the candidature of Abraham Ossie Aidoo, the NPP beat the then governing party, National Democratic Congress (NDC), with a difference of 7,010 votes.
Four years later, the no-nonsense legislator stretched the gap further with an overwhelming 14,782 votes, consolidating the dominance of the NPP over the NDC in the constituency, and making the constituency a safe seat for the elephant party.
Mr. Anokye Appiah, who is the Chairman of the Aggrey Road 1/3 Primary School Number One (1) Polling Station, continued that Ossie Aidoo, once again, led the NPP to win the seat for the third time running, with a difference of 10,914 votes.
Unfortunately for the MP, the delegates at the time refused to renew his mandate, instead they voted for the then candidate, Naa Torshi Addo, with the intention that she would be able to widen the gap between the two parties.
The Aggrey Road Polling Station Chairman elucidated that the vote difference between the NPP and NDC in the 2008 parliamentary election in the constituency stood at 8,686.
Many people, according to him, were of the opinion that she was unable to outshine her predecessor, perhaps, because that was the very first time she was contesting on the ticket of the NPP and, therefore, deserved to be given a second chance to prove her mettle.
But, before the 2012 parliamentary election could even take off, the Member of Parliament for the area had already lost favour with her own constituents, who hailed her four years earlier, he said.
Mr. Anokye Appiah continued that it was, therefore, not surprising when after the 2012 parliamentary elections the votes difference between the MP and NDC counterpart came tumbling down to a mere 945, when Nana Akufo Addo, presidential candidate of the party, stretched John Mahama by 1,780 votes.
Even that, the Polling Station Chairman observed that some top party activists in Communities Two, Three and Five, all in the constituency, realising that things were getting out of hand, and that if nothing was done Nana Addo was going to lose the seat, decided to go out at the last minute to campaign for her.
He called on all the delegates of the party to vote massively for Carlos Ahenkora, one of the candidates who has already picked his forms, to contest on the ticket of the party in the parliamentary primaries scheduled for next month.
“My reasons for calling on the delegates to vote for Mr. Carlos Ahenkora is that wherever I go throughout the constituency, people tell me that if you people (referring to NPP) don’t bring Carlos, we won’t vote,” he noted.
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