An aspiring parliamentary candidate in the Agona West Constituency in the Central Region, Yawson Otoo, has said that the party needs a new candidate to retain the seat in the 2024 elections.
He stated that currently, there was a lot of discontent among the people with the sitting Member of Parliament (MP), Cynthia Morrison, in the run-up to this year’s general election.
He said the sitting MP had suffered some level of disaffection just as it happened to the former MP for the area, Samuel K. Obodai, in 2012 which paved the way for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to snatch the seat.
“In fact based on the results from the last two elections, the NPP runs the risk of losing the parliamentary seat to the opposition NDC,” he told the Daily Graphic in an interview.
Five persons are contesting the primary.
They are Mrs Morrison (incumbent), Yawson Otoo, Christopher Arthur, Joseph Afankwah and Ben Yamoah.
Mr Otoo noted that considering the results of particularly, the 2020 elections, if the party presented the same candidate on December 7, the NPP was likely to surrender the seat to the NDC, saying “although the NPP won the seat in 2016 with more than 11,000 votes, the figure dropped drastically to 2,700 in 2020”.
He expressed worry that the last time there was disenchantment among the constituents, the party painfully lost the seat to the NDC and that it was important for the party to consider the scary signs on the wall to give him the chance to represent the party in the 2024 elections.
Mr Otoo, an astute businessman, urged the party delegates to give him the chance in the upcoming parliamentary primary as he represented the new hope capable of safeguarding the seat for the ruling NPP.
Touching on his vision, he noted that one of his topmost priorities was to champion the creation of a new district out of the current Agona West Municipality to fast-track the growth and development of the area.
Additionally, he said, he would work to attract investors to set up factories, one in each of the 10 major towns to create private sector jobs for the teeming unemployed youth.