The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Chairman in the Greater Accra region, Divine Agorhom, has expressed a preference for delegates to maintain the party’s sitting MPs in the upcoming parliamentary primaries.
He believes the MPs have gathered some experience with their long stay in Parliament and have also familiarized themselves with the terrain.
About 18 MPs, including the MP for Suame and Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, have declared their intentions not to seek re-election on December 7.
In an interview with Citi News ahead of vetting for aspirants, the party’s chairman in the region noted that even though steps have been put in place to ensure a free and fair process, he prefers incumbent MPs be retained.
“The arrangements, everything is set for the vetting today; we have aspirants for all the 14 constituencies, and all the aspirants have gone through the processes. I will not do anything that will undermine the processes in any way, and nobody can do that under my watch. They should all be rest assured that we are going to ensure that we have a free and fair process and treat everybody equally. We are members of the party; it’s just an internal election.”
“By and large, if you ask me, I would have wished that we maintain all our incumbent 14 MPs; at least they have gone through the process before. And they have some level of experience which is to our advantage, so if we have them there, then we can concentrate on the orphan constituencies,” he said.
The New Patriotic Party has scheduled to undertake vetting for aspirants in all 137 constituencies participating in the next phase of elections from January 3 to January 5.
The process promises to be keen as over 90% of the constituencies have multiple aspirants filing at the close of nominations.
There are, however, some constituencies with aspirants going unopposed. The Greater Accra Region has two of those.
But ahead of the vetting on Wednesday, the party has given instructions on being slow to disqualify candidates.
