The Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Divine Otoo Agorhom, has attributed the party’s reduction in parliamentary seats during the 2020 elections to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Mr. Agorhom, the pandemic disrupted voter registration efforts, preventing some NPP supporters from registering and participating in the elections. He also noted that a significant number of new voters, who traditionally did not favour the NPP, registered and voted against the party.
As a result, the NPP’s parliamentary seats in the region dropped from 21 to 14, while the National Democratic Congress (NDC) retained 13 seats.
Speaking on The Point of View with Bernard Avle on Channel One TV, Mr Agorhom said the party’s goal of gaining three additional seats was hindered by these challenges, particularly the effects of the pandemic on the electoral process.
“We have numbers, close to 4 million registered voters, this happened because in the year 2020, because of COVID, a lot of people who ordinarily would have travelled to their home regions to go and register couldn’t do so.
“So we had a lot of them here, especially those from the Volta region, there are a lot in Tema West, so I have a fair idea of what happened and the voter population in the region shot up. Before the 2020 elections, we had 21 seats, as against their [NDC] 13.
“We were hoping to add some three more, we were very clear in our minds as to what we wanted to do. Unfortunately, a lot of events worked against us. Mainly because of this same unfriendly friend of ours COVID-19. It prevented a lot of people from going to register. Voters who were not traditionally aligned with us registered in their numbers here [Greater Accra], it affected us hugely.
“In 2020, because of COVID-19, we couldn’t do our parliamentary primaries early, if you recall, we did it three to four months before the elections. Immediately after that, we needed to start the registration process and all that worked against us. We couldn’t realise our dreams of hitting the 24 seats. Unfortunately, we rather dropped 8 of our seats, and we gained an additional one. So in aggregate, we now have 14 and they have 20.”
The New Patriotic Party Greater Accra Regional Chairman stated confidently of redeeming its lost seats in the region.
“Yes, we are working to redeem the seats that we lost, and possibly increase it. So, that is what we are looking at and we not been resting, we have been working at it all this while.”
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