Sarah Adwoa Safo
The Constituency Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in Dome-Kwabenya, Theophilus Ansah Larbi, has rejected incumbent Member of Parliament (MP) Sarah Adwoa Safo’s bid for a fourth parliamentary term.
Larbi believes that presenting Adwoa Safo as the party’s Parliamentary Candidate again will reduce the NPP’s chances of winning the seat in 2024 and potentially aid the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) instead.
He notes that the NPP struggled to win the seat in the 2020 election due to Adwoa Safo’s attitude.
According to Larbi, Adwoa Safo was absent from the campaign trail and made no efforts to help after the election.
He states that while he appreciates her apology, it will be difficult for her to be retained as a candidate.
Adwoa Safo intends to contest the seat during the NPP primaries in February 2024.
“In the last elections, all these things Adwoa [Safo] has been doing started before the elections,” Larbi told TV3.
“She didn’t help in the campaign, she did not do anything after the election and she just went away after the election [and] she is just coming back to apologise.”
“. . .I wish to state that I am sincerely sorry. I apologise for my actions and inactions. None of my actions were intentional, deliberate or calculated to bring disrepute to our great party,” she said in a post on Thursday, September 14.
“I was going through a lot as a mother and as a woman. I want to take this opportunity to ask for your forgiveness for anything untoward that I have done to bring the name of the party into disrepute.
“As the saying goes, ‘To err is human and to forgive is divine’. I ask for your forgiveness.”
“Apology well-taken but I think if we give the seat back to Adwoa Safo, the votes of the NDC will increase again, which we wouldn’t like going into 2024.”
“But for the first time, they got it because of certain attitudes our MP put before the Constituency elections.”
This comes after the former Deputy Majority Leader had served notice of seeking a fourth parliamentary term on the ticket of the NPP in the 2024 elections.
She has expressed her readiness to contest the party’s primaries scheduled for February, 2024 with the view that she has the support of the people to contest for the seat again.
“If the people have called you, what is this apology all about? They have forgiven you because they have called you, so what is this about again? Why worry, then?” the Constituency Secretary wondered.
However her secretary disagrees saying that from his wide interactions with supporters of the NPP in the Constituency, “what they are telling us is for what Hon Adwoa Safo has done within her three terms of as an MP, they think there should be a cut at a point
“If I mean well for the party, there is no way I will support her bid because campaigning will be very difficult even if we will win, it will be very difficult than bring a new candidate.”
By Vincent Kubi