After a week of intense campaigning, the people of Talensi will today, [Tuesday] head to the polls to elect a new Member of Parliament (MP) to represent them in Ghana’s Legislature.
Presently, the Talensi constituency has no representative in Parliament because the MP resigned after he was enskinned the Paramount Chief of the area.
By law, he had to relinquish his position since chiefs are bared from participating in active partisan politics.
The Speaker of Parliament, Edward Doe Adjaho declared the seat vacant and called for a by-election.
[contextly_sidebar id=”Ei2Gh7pMINdJN72YRwGOePtb1HGT6GB4″]The Electoral Commission (EC), therefore set Tuesday, July 7 for the by-election to take place.
The two major political parties in Ghana, the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) then organized their primaries to elect their respective candidates to contest the election.
The NDC elected B. T. Baba while the NPP elected Thomas Duanab Wuni. The People’s National Convention (PNC) is being represented by Dr. Michael Wombeago.
The United Front Party (UFP) in a press statement over the weekend announced that they are withdrawing their candidate from the race and subsequently pledged their support for the NDC’s B. T. Baba.
In an interesting twist, the Ghana Freedom Party’s (GFP) candidate, Yaro Bameezina Philip has said he is likely not to vote for himself because his party has neglected him.
The NPP is poised to retain the seat which was formerly held by their party member, now the Talensi Paramount Chief but the NDC has given strong indications that it will wrestle the seat from the NPP since the constituency is their strong hold.
The constituency has a voter population of 39,523 and the election will take place in 22 electoral areas.
The EC has promised to conduct a free and fair election but has expressed the hope that the contesting parties will accept the results at the end of voting.
The Commission has however served notice that it will strictly enforce the ‘no verification, no vote’ rule.
By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @ osamidan