Senior Lecturer at the Kumasi Technical University (KsTU), Professor Smart Sarpong has called on the New Patriotic Party(NPP) to pay attention to the Ashanti region saying the region has the largest number of constituencies and therefore has a special place in Ghana’s election space that no other region has.
Speaking on Wontumi tv’s morning show, the election researcher stated that Ashanti region being NPP’s stronghold should be handled with care and differently from the other regions.
His main reason was size and numbers. According to him, the region has the highest number of constituencies which are 47, Greater Accra comes close but is only able to do 34. This size he says matter because elections deal with numbers and more numbers imply more votes.
“I know it is not in the party’s constitution, but they can create sub-regions and each of the sub-regions will have eight or seven constituencies. We will take one sub-region and hand it over to a chairman, that chairman will report to the main regional chairman,” he said.
He said, the NPP’s popularity in the region is waning because of the numbers saying the latter has created an enormous task for campaigners.
“At first nine out of ten people voted for the NPP, but today the gap has widened that people do not even know their polling station executives,” he said.
The lecturer stated that campaigning in the region is tiring, because all the work has been centered in one particular direction. He compares it to the Bono region where he said, a candidate can use one week to tour all the constituencies.
But the case is different in the Ashanti region where before one is done touring all 47 constituencies, the election would have ended.
He advised the party to create such divisions that will ensure that “operations are well managed and handled.”
He said when such an action is taken, “I think the party will get the best out of the region.”