Essikado-Ketan NPP supporters at the campaign launch
Economic and social activities in the Essikado-Ketan constituency of the Western region came to a halt last Sunday when the Member of Parliament (MP) for the area, Joe Ghartey launched his campaign for re-election to represent his constituents in the country’s legislative assembly on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the December 7 general elections.
Amid brass band music, thousands of NPP supporters in the constituency, clad in the party’s T-shirts and other paraphernalia, marched through the principal streets of the area and later converged at the forecourt of the constituency’s office of the party where they were addressed by some bigwigs of the party.
Speaker after speaker lambasted the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for kicking against the NPP’s free Senior High School (SHS) when the party’s leader, President John Mahama benefited from the same policy.
They challenged the NDC to provide any alternative policy to the free SHS programme proposed by the NPP.
Kwesi Biney, Regional first Vice Chairman of the NPP, told the crowd that the party would leave no stone unturned in capturing power from the NDC in December.
He mentioned that the NPP had a track-record of implementing human-centered policies and stressed that the party was serious about implementing the policy when voted into power.
He alleged that the NDC propaganda against the free SHS policy was as a result of ignorance and lack of vision to improve the country’s education sector.
“Please don’t listen to the NDC and vote massively for Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP to implement the policy to enable every Ghanaian child to have access to secondary education,” he told the NPP supporters.
Joan Abena Kwallah, Regional Women Organizer of the party, noted that since the NPP was able to implement the National Health Insurance Scheme, National Youth Employment Programme and Free Maternal Care among others, there was no reason why it could not implement free SHS education policy.
She described the alleged insensitive comment by Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, the campaign coordinator of President John Mahama to the effect that the NPP’s free education policy would collapse like the Melcom building as unfortunate.
For his part, Papa Owusu-Ankomah, MP for Sekondi, commended the party’s activists for their massive support and urged people to translate their interest in the NPP into votes.
Hon Joe Ghartey assured the gathering that the NPP, led the able leader, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo- Addo, would win this year’s election and form the next government.
He appealed to supporters of the party to continue propagating the free SHS policy to the electorate and also defuse the NDC’s propaganda against the policy.
“If the NDC has no alternative policy they should leave the NPP alone and allow Ghanaians to bring back the NPP to come and implement the programme,” he added.
From Emmanuel Opoku, Essikado