Peter Mac Manu
The 2020 Campaign Manager of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Peter Mac Manu, has said the party will conduct a formal assessment on the selection process of parliamentary candidates to fine tune the candidate franchise in order to achieve the desired outcome of elections.
According to him, the just-ended elections have taught the ruling party some useful lessons, intimating that “the management of the parliamentary election primaries is a worry that we have to look at. I think it is an area that we are concerned about. So we will look at it.”
Speaking to Joy News shortly after the declaration of the presidential results on Wednesday, Mr. Manu indicated that the NPP intended to prevent the mistakes of the past from reoccurring.
He was reacting to the loss of some parliamentary seats in the just-ended elections in which some ministers of state and deputies were among the casualties.
Mr. Manu attributed the major parliamentary casualties to fallouts that occurred during the primaries earlier this year.
Currently, the NPP has 137 seats and it is banking its hopes on the independent MP-elect for the Fomena Constituency in the Ashanti Region, Andrew Amoako Asiamah, who had come out of the party to contest after a disagreement.
It is also looking forward to winning the Sene West seat in the Bono East Region which is under contention.
Mr. Manu said the party set out two objectives – to win all-round and to get a gap of over a million votes, but was able to achieve the first one, noting that “so we will go and sit down, do a post mortem and relook at things that we may not have done properly.”
The NPP looks forward to forming a majority in Parliament in order to have the mandate to select the next Speaker and the First Deputy Speaker of the House.
According to results announced by the Electoral Commission, Western Region with 17 seats produced nine seats for the NPP and eight seats for the NDC.
In the Central Region with 23 seats, the NPP got 10 seats against the NDC’s 12 while in the Greater Accra Region with 34, the NPP had 14 and the NDC got 20.
Volta Region with 18 seats, the NDC had 17 against the NPP’s one seat; NDC got all eight Oti Region seats, while Eastern Region with 33 seats, the NPP got 25 against the NDC’s eight.
In the Ashanti Region with 47 seats, the NPP had 42 seats against the NDC’s four while in the Western North Region with nine seats, the NPP got three as against the NDC’s six.
Ahafo Region had six seats and the NPP got four against the NDC’s two; while in the Bono Region with 12 seats, the NPP and the NDC split the seats, six each.
In Bono East with 11 seats, the NPP got three with the NDC’s seven; while in Savannah with seven seats, the NPP got three as against the NDC’s four.
In the Northern Region where there are 18 seats, the NPP got nine seats as against eight by the NDC; while in the North East Region where there are six seats, the NPP got four against the NDC’s two seats.
The Upper East Region has 15 seats and the NPP got only one, with the rest of the 14 going to the NDC; while in the Upper West Region where there are 11 seats, the NPP got three as against the NDC’s eight.
By Ernest Kofi Adu