By Nicholas Osei-Wusu
The incumbent New Patriotic Party, NPP’s Ashanti Regional Chairman, Bernard Antwi Boasiako, popularly called Chairman Wontumi, has been retained to lead the party into the next Presidential and Parliamentary elections and beyond following his win over four other contenders for the Chairmanship position at the party’s Regional Delegates Conference held in Kumasi yesterday May, 28, 2022.
Chairman Wontumi polled 464 of the votes cast while his closest challenger, Odeneho Kwaku Appiah also known as COKA managed 306 votes representing a defeat margin of 168 votes contrary to a pre-election impression of a very close contest.
According to our Correspondent, Nicholas Osei-Wusu, even though most of the incumbent Regional Executives also retained their positions, the 1st Regional Vice Chairman and former Regional NADMO Director, Kwabena Nsenkyire lost.
The elections, which had been planned to close earlier than was the case in previous similar events, rather ended at about 8pm as a result of nearly three hours of a delayed start from the scheduled 8am. Also, intermittently, there were stoppages following strong disagreements over the eligibility of some of the delegates to participate in the exercise.
Notable were the row over the names presented as delegates from TESCON which eventually led to the inability of the 63 TESCON representatives to cast their votes, and delegates from the Obuasi West Constituency over issues of a Court injunction.
Only seven out of the 17 expected delegates from Juaben were able to cast their ballots while Mampong did not present any delegate due to their inability to elect their CONSTITUENCY Executives.
The Ashanti Regional Director of the Electoral Commission, Banor Bioh officially declared results of the elections.
The other elected Regional Executives to manage the NPP in the next four years are Patrick Acheampong, 1st Vice Chairman, Victoria Nyarko Owusu-Achiaw, 2nd Vice Chairman, Kwaku Adom Appiah, Secretary and Alan Gyimah, Assistant Secretary.
The rest are Hajia Zainab Sallow, Treasurer, Nana Ama Ampomah, Women Organizer, and Raphael Sarfo Patrick, Youth Organizer.
The incumbent Regional Organizer, Dr. Francis Adomako and the Regional NASARA Coordinator, Salim Bamba were retained unopposed.
In his victory Speech the retained Regional Chairman, Bernard Antwi Boasiako, apologized to anyone particularly the contestants he or any of the newly elected executives offended through the campaign period noting that “political campaigns are always fraught with such excesses”.
They should therefore forgive and “join forces with the new executives to pursue the NPP’s election 2024 target of retaining political power to set a new record in Ghana’s political history”.
