The Campaign Manager for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Peter Mac Manu has intimated that, the leadership of the party following the recent election results, will review its parliamentary primaries system.
Mr. Mac Manu’s comment comes on the back of the recent parliamentary results in the 2020 elections, where after almost all the regional results collation, at least 33 incumbent NPP Members of Parliament lost their seats in the just ended elections. It is also seen that about 21 of them are either Ministers of State or Deputy Ministers.
Speaking during an interaction with the media, Mr Mac Manu attributed the major parliamentary losses to fallouts that occurred during the primaries earlier this year.
According to the campaign manager, the party has learnt a lot of lessons from the just-ended elections and will work at ensuring that some mistakes that they committed do not happen again.
“The management of the parliamentary elections primaries is a worry that we have to look at. I think it is an area that we are of concern. So, we will look at it.”
Mr Mac Manu further disclosed also that, the party prior to the elections, set two objectives, which is to win all-round which has been achieved and the second was to get a gap of over one million votes but that unfortunately was not achieved.
“So, we will go and sit down, do a post mortem and relook at things that we may not have done properly.”
Aside from the 33 MPs who lost their seats, a total of 41 incumbent MPs who lost the NPP primaries earlier this year and thus did not contest in Monday’s polls. Meanwhile, four NPP MPs are retiring.
So, in total, the governing party will lose at least 78 legislators out of their 169 in the next parliament. That means about 50% of all NPP MPs are not returning.
Also, with regards to parliamentary losses, at least 15 incumbent National Democratic Congress (NDC) Members of Parliament (MPs) have lost their seats. That is aside from the 10 NDC MPs who lost their primaries last year, and seven others who are retiring.
This also implies that 32 current NDC MPs out of the 106 are not returning to Parliament.
Meanwhile, the latest results released by the Electoral Commission shows that, the New Patriotic Party has won 137 parliamentary seats putting it ahead of the opposition National Democratic Congress which has won 136 seats.
There is also an independent candidate who won a parliamentary seat in the Fomena constituency of the Ashanti Region.
Figures from the Electoral Commission show that results from Sene West are pending as the poll conducted in the constituency is still being disputed.
Prior to the latest information, the NDC and NPP have both claimed that they have won majority seats in Parliament.
Whereas the NDC insisted that it had won 140 parliamentary seats after close of polls on December 7, 2020, the NPP disputed the claim.
