The New Patriotic Party’s parliamentary candidate for North Dayi, Ken Anku has asked the party not to give up hopes of winning more votes in the Volta region in next year’s elections.
According to him, it should not be difficult for the party to make inroads into the Volta region which is a known stronghold of the ruling NDC once the party works extremely hard to gain the confidence of the people.
Speaking on Multi TV’s Minority Caucus program, Mr. Anku noted that the disappointing performance of the incumbent NDC government in the region and the treatment being meted out to former President Rawlings by the party, could be to the NPP advantage if it perseveres and works hard to woo voters in the region to their side.
According to him, people of the Volta region vote massively for the NDC “because of Jerry Rawlings” but now that “they have removed his hand from the dish”, he is certain the NDC’s votes will reduce.
The aspiring North Dayi parliamentary candidate dispelled suggestions that indigenes of the Volta Region are ethnocentric in their approach to voting. He thus asked voters in the region not to lend credence to those perceptions by ensuring that they vote for a party that will ensure the development of the people and the region at large.
“I sometimes bleed out that once you identify yourself as an NPP person, you are labelled as a murderer” he said.
Mr. Anku also challenged government to focus on establishing agro based industries in the Volta Region to create employment opportunities for the people in the region instead of concentrating on putting up universities which might not benefit the majority of the people in the region.
Deputy Director of Communications for the NPP, Perry Curtis Okudzeto who was also a guest on the show argued that the democratic process is about “development especially when you have a government or a party which keeps telling you that you belong on their side and yet when they come to power the national cake is not shared and you are not kept in mind when the national cake is being shared”.
He contended that “out of the 18 districts in the Volta Region, every single district got a model secondary school… apart from that, 85 basic schools got school feeding programme in the Volta Region when ex-President Kufuor was in power.”
He also rubbished arguments that the NPP administration did not build any new polytechnics in the country during its term in office, explaining there was no need to build new institutions when old ones existed.
Mr. Okudzeto was hopeful the 2012 elections will mark a turning point for the people of the Volta Region to vote for “visionary leadership” and not individuals or personalities.