The 2020 Parliamentary Candidate for the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Talensi District of the Upper East Region Thomas Duanab Wuni has revealed, that issues of small-scale mining, FSHS double-track system, Chieftaincy and traditional differences between Tongraan and Namoalugo Chief, were few of the many reasons they lost the Talensi seat again to National Democratic Congress (NDC) Benson Tongo Baba the incumbent Member of Parliament (MP).
According to Mr. Duanab Wuni who spoke to Ngamegbulam Chidozie Stephen of Apexnewsgh.com in an exclusive interview after December 7, 2020, general elections said it was their wish as a party to at least win 8 seats in the Upper East Region and Talensi was among the 8 targeted constituencies but unfortunately, the party lost massively.
“It is true that anytime one loses, he would want to do a post-mortem to find the causes. We thought in this region we are going to win at least 8 seats and little did we know that there are other hidden issues which our opponents exploited. In Talensi for instance, they were a whole litany of issues internal and external.”
However, the defeated Parliamentary Candidate explained, that people from the Eastern part of Talensi voted massively against the NPP because according to them, a vote for NPP will be a vote for Tongraan who happened to be the paramount chief for the Talensi Traditional Area and aside from that, the differences between the Paramount Chief and Namoalugo Chief contributed immensely because all the affiliated Namoalugo community voted against the NPP.
He further cited the ‘Double Track system’, what he believed should have been a blessing to his people as another contributing factor because parents were complaining bitterly about the continuous increase of teenage pregnancy in various communities where they visited, coupled with the blockage of mining pits which have caused some level of unemployment to the youth.
“With regards to the small-scale miners, the issue has been that, the area was blocked since 2016 to large scale mining and obviously the companies will come and take over their places and they will do the checking of intruders and anybody standing by thinks is the government that is doing it. So, that is the basic problem with the small-scale miners.”
“With regards to the double track, a lot of our people are not educated and kept dwelling on this fact that their girl child has come back because of double track and most of them were getting pregnant, but they forgot that teenage pregnancy is common in mining areas especially once gold is booming small girls are bound to be pregnant because their peers with get money and sleep with them. So, it was difficult convincing them that it wasn’t the double-track”.
“But unfortunately, the NDC came so strong two days to the election with enough Propaganda running round the whole East, issues like President visited and couldn’t address the people was an issue, the people from the East were claiming that it was a mark of disrespect to them. Aside from that, the Namoalugo Chief is having some differences with the Tongraan, and that one too worked against us because where ever you have affiliate Namoalugo communities, all of them went against us and we have recordings of some of the young men from Namoalugo who went around telling the people that a vote for the NPP is a vote for Tongraan and the people bought into those things and there was no much we could do.” He stressed
“As for the party internal wrangling, I think it existed everywhere because people though once they didn’t win the primaries, they were waiting for you to lose and then, they can come in but I don’t want to dwell so much on that because we worked because coming from 8,000 votes down to 13,000 it shows we worked. As for me, I am not happy I didn’t win but am happy we made a good show.” He told Apexnewsgh.com
However, in the 2020 parliamentary elections, Benson Tongo Baba of the NDC retained the Talensi seat with a total votes of 16,057 votes whiles Thomas Pearson Duanab Awuni of the NPP secured 12,946 and the PNC candidate got 6,725. Total valid ballots 35,728 whiles Total rejected ballot was 1,019
Apexnewsgh.com/Ghana/Ngamegbulam Chidozie Stephen
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