The Member of Parliament (MP) for Oda, William Quaitoo, has accused some chiefs and senior politicians in his constituency of orchestrating his defeat in the just-ended New Patriotic Party (NPP) parliamentary primaries.
The Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education observed that some traditional rulers in Kotoku played the tribal card and succeeded.
According to the MP, since 1992, the chiefs and some senior politicians have desired one of their tribesmen to be the candidate for the constituency, hence the decision to undermine him.
“There are several factors that come into play when you are looking for a candidate to represent a group”, he said, explaining: “One key factor is the tribal sentiments and it played in my area and I thought that candidates will rise above that.”
“I come from a very small area called Gyedem, only three polling stations, and it is the only Abuakwa town within the constituency.
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“Since 1992, nobody from the Kotoku land has been an MP before and they [chiefs] said now they want their own to represent them, they want a Kotoku person to be an MP,” he narrated.
“I know a number of chiefs called some big men and said: ‘Since 1992, we have not had our own son representing us and we want somebody to represent us’, so they won the seat,” he added.
The outgoing MP, however, said his defeat won’t affect his work in the Chamber.
This follows concerns that parliamentary work will be affected as a result of the defeat of some MPs.
After the primaries, 41 sitting NPP MPs, who wanted to be retained as the party’s parliamentary candidates going into the 2020 elections, lost their seats.
“That number is almost 25% of all the 169 NPP MPs in Parliament. Simply put, almost one in every four NPP MP lost Saturday’s contests. That’s even after about 65 others sailed through uncontested. The casualties could have been more if it was a free-for-all fight across all the 169 constituencies,” JoyNews’ Joseph Opoku-Gakpo noted in an analysis.
He indicated that the list of losers included Chairman of Parliament’s Health Committee, Dr Kwabena Twum Nuamah; Chairman of Food and Agricultural Committee, Kwame Asafu Adjei; Chairman of the Defence and Interior Committee, Seth Acheampong; Chairman of Works and Housing Committee, Nana Amoako; Chairman of Poverty Reduction Committee, Godfred Tangu Bayon; Chairman of Finance Committee, Dr Mark Assibey Yeboah and Chairman of Communications Committee, Fredrick Opare Ansah.
Also, Chairman of the Education Committee, William Quaitoo; Chairman of Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee, Ben Abdallah; Chairman of Government Assurances Committee, Collins Owusu Amankwaah; Chairman of the Gender and Children Committee, Dr Kojo Appiah Kubi; Chairman of the Trade and Industry Committee, Nana Amaniampong Marfo and the Chairman of Youth and Sports Committee, Alex Agyekum all lost their seats.
But Mr Quaitoo told JoyNews, he will continue to deliver his duties to the best of his abilities.