Ashanti, Northern regions elect six women to go to Parliament
Six women from two regions, five from the Ashanti Region and one from the Northern Region, have been elected to go to Parliament on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party.
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In the Kwabre East Constituency, a Law student at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Miss Francisca Oteng Mensah, polled a whopping 71,754 votes, representing 83.08 per cent of the total votes cast, to win in last Wednesday’s parliamentary election, reports Kwadwo Baffoe Donkor, Kumasi.
The NPP M.P-elect beat the District Chief Executive and the National Democratic Congress’s (NDC’s) candidate, Mr Adams Iddisah, who got 13, 673, with Ms Grace Affram of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) managing 407 votes, while Mr J. Mohammed Mustapha of the People’s National Congress (PNC), and Mr Emmanuel Osei Boadu of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), polled 364 and 174 votes, respectively. The Ashanti Region has produced the youngest Member of Parliament for the next Parliament.
New entrants
The 23-year-old MP-elect is joining two new entrants and two women who retained their seats in the election in the Ashanti Region on the ticket of the NPP to go to the seventh Parliament of the Fourth Republic.
The NPP won 44 out of the 47 seats in the region, an improvement over its performance in the 2012 election, and produced five women as part of the 44 MPs-elect.
Another young lady who is also making her first entry to the Legislature is Ms Mavis Nkansah Boadu, who polled 41,694 votes, as against 10,141 obtained by Awudu Salim of the NDC, to win the election.
The contest was a two-horse race between the NPP and the NDC, which the NPP won with a landslide.
The party also got a new female MP in the person of Ms Joyce Adwoa Akoh Dei, who won the Bosome Freho Constituency seat after defeating the incumbent in the party’s primaries earlier this year.
She polled 16,496 votes to beat Nana Yaw Ofori Kuragu, a former NPP MP of the constituency, who went independent.
Mr Kwame Adarkwa of the NDC came third in the election with 4,550 votes Mr Bright Baffour Asare of PPP had 123 votes, while Mr Samuel Yeboah of the CPP got 100 votes.
Two incumbents
The other female winners are the MP for Asokwa, Madam Patricia Appiagyei(popularly known as Mama Pat) who retained her seat and Ms Ama Pomaa Boateng, the incumbent MP for Juaben.
Madam Appiagyei successfully won her bid for a second term by polling 55,564 votes to beat Ms Dorcas Dufie Osei Boadu of the NDC, Ms Sarah Amponsah Forjour of the PPP and Mr Pious Owusu Ansah of the CPP, who respectively got 9,812; 1,071 and 369 votes.
Ms Boateng is also going for a second term after obtaining 23,115 votes as against 5,530 votes obtained by Nana Prempeh Amankwah of the NDC and CPP’s Mr Gallo Stephen Ayitey, who got 553 votes.
The region lost two of its females MPs in the party’s primaries held earlier last year.
The MP for Oforikrom, Madam Elizabeth Agyeman, and the MP for Manso Nkwanta, Madam Grace Addo, both lost their slots in the primaries.
However, the party has increased its number of female MPs from the region by one. In the last Parliament, there were four female MPs out of the 17 that the NPP had in the house.
From Tamale
Samuel Duodu reports from Tamale that a former Minister of State in the erstwhile President Kufuor administration, Hajia Alima Mahama, MP-elect for Nalerigu-Gambaga, is the only female parliamentary candidate in the Northern Region who was able to win a parliamentary seat in the December 7 polls out of the six female parliamentary candidates who contested the just-ended parliamentary election in the region.
The other women who contested in the parliamentary polls but could not make it to Parliament in the region are Madam Veronica Alele Henning, who contested on the ticket of the NPP for the Bole-Bamboi Constituency, Hajia Kulsum Mohammed, NPP candidate for Tamale North, Madam Issah Zelia and Hawa Musah who contested the Sagnarigu seat on the ticket of the CPP and the United Front Party (UFP) respectively, and Madam Zaharatu Iddrisah, also on the ticket of the PPP.
Hajia Mahama, who is not a newcomer in politics, snatched the Nalerigu-Gambaga seat from the NDC in the 2016 Parliamentary elections.
MP-elect
Hajia Mahama, who is also a member of the Transition Team in charge of Local Government, was once the Minister of Women and Children Affairs, now Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, under ex-President Kufuor’s regime and once the Member of Parliament (MP) for the area until she lost the seat in the 2012 elections but came back to win it in 2016.
Before Hajia Mahama won the Nalerigu-Gambaga parliamentary seat, the only sitting female MP in the Northern Region was Hajia Mary Boforo of the NDC but she lost her party’s primaries in her bid to contest on the ticket of the NDC in the Savelugu Constituency for the fifth time, thus making her one of the longest serving female MPs in the country.
