Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) will on Friday, January 8, 2016 try for the fourth time to elect a Presiding Member (PM).
The two contestants are Assemblyman for New Suame Electoral Area (EA,) Nana Kofi Senya, and Adumhene, Nana Baffour Adjei Kese.
136 members of the Assembly with voting rights, made up of 92 Assembly men and women and 44 government appointees, will vote to elect the PM. Currently, there is no member for Dichemso EA, since a case on the election for that Area is still pending in court.
The Assembly has voted four times and each poll has ended in a deadlock with none of the candidates garnering the ballots of two-thirds of the Assembly members (95 votes) to carry the day.
Five candidates contested the position the first time last year. The Assemblyman for Angloga East EA, Amidu Gariba, got two votes; the Assemblyman for Ahinsan Estate EA, Nana Yaw Wiredu, obtained four votes; the Assembly member for Dadiesoaba EA, Nana Adusei, got 27 votes; Nana Senya obtained35 votes, and; Adumhene got 59 ballots.
The two front-runners, Nana Senya and Adumhene went in for the second polls, but neither garnered the two-thirds votes required. The former obtained 69 votes and the latter, 63.
Similarly, the third voting in the Assembly, taken on October 16, 2015, ended in a dead-lock. Adumhene obtained 74 votes and Nana Senya polled 59 ballots.
The fourth voting should have happened twenty-one days after the third, but could not come on.
Interestingly, while Adumhene is a member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and was the Presiding Member in the days of President J. A. Kufuor, he is this time around the nominee of the Metropolitan Chief Executive, Kwadwo Bonsu, who is President Mahama’s appointee.
<<Print>>