Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has commended the NDC parliamentary aspirant for the Kumawu constituency, Kwasi Amankwaa, for improving the fortunes of the party during yesterday’s by-election.

According to him, the gains made by the parliamentary aspirant is indeed an improvement on what past aspirants have made. He further stated that serving as a polling agent has been an extremely useful experience in the Kumawu by-election.

Mr Ablakwa equally congratulated the NPP’s Ernest Yaw Anim on his victory and indicated that he looks forward to him joining the rest of the legislators in Parliament.

“The NDC’s Kwasi Amankwaa deserves lots of credit for improving our 2020 fortunes by securing 3,723 valid votes representing 17.29% as compared with 2,439 (8.33%) garnered by his predecessor. Mr. Amankwaa thus moved from 3rd to 2nd position with an overall improvement from 2020 of 52.6% compared with a measly improvement of 2% by the NPP.”
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa

Moreover, Mr Ablakwa lamented the incidents of vote buying which marred the electoral process. To this end, he expressed the need for the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government to prioritize the needs of Ghanaians at all times and not only when a by-election has been occasioned.

“The NDC’s significant gains in the NPP’s stronghold of Kumawu despite the blatant abuse of incumbency manifested by overnight development projects and condemnable vote-buying is both instructive and a cautionary tale to the NPP, particularly as turn-out still dropped by some 7,744 regardless of the avalanche of inducements. May we nourish Ghana’s Democracy with the right values for our collective progress.”
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa

Reactions on the Kumawu by-election

Meanwhile, Member of Parliament for South Dayi, Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, has cautioned the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to work hard if the party wants to win the 2024 general elections.

Reacting to the loss of the party’s parliamentary candidate in the Kumawu by-election, Mr Dafeamekpor indicated that the figures of the NDC in some of the polling centres in Kumawu were too low given the amount of campaign work the party did in those areas.

“This is to confirm that at Kumawu we didn’t record 3 or 4 votes as I earlier on indicated. I apologize for that but the figures were still too low in places as compared to the great effort that went in. It means we must all work extra hard as Executives & PCs if we’re to win 2024.”
Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor

Elsewhere, Director of Communications for the New Patriotic Party, Richard Ahiagbah, has blamed the National Democratic Congress’ defeat in the Kumawu bye-elections on their lackadaisical attitude towards the election. He revealed that as against the NPP which took the election very seriously, the NDC had merely arrived in Kumawu three days to the election.

Mr Ahiagbah explained that the NPP had deployed adequate resources to ensure electoral victory in the bye-elections and called on the general public to disregard accusations of vote-buying.

“The NDC came there; they didn’t put in any work. NDC showed up in town three days or so to the election and they came to do some skirmishes there, they think that’s how they win people’s votes? But we took this election very seriously. The NPP had deployed all that we needed to deploy to make sure that we canvas the votes that we needed to canvas because we took the elections seriously. We were not considering of the fact that it is our backyard and therefore we were just going to coast around and have people go and vote. We are taking it serious.”
Richard Ahiagbah