Former National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament (MP) for Akwatia, Baba Jamal, has once made news headlines after participating in a public election, this time around his party’s parliamentary primaries for the Ayawaso East Constituency in the Greater Accra Region.
The former legislator, who emerged victorious in the primaries, has been accused of engaging in vote-buying, which has cost him his job as Ghana’s High Commissioner to Nigeria.
Now, he might even lose the candidacy of the party in the upcoming by-election for the Ayawaso East constituency due to calls by many, including the Majority Caucus of Parliament, that the outcome of the primaries be annulled and the persons found guilty of engaging in vote-buying be disqualified from the subsequent primaries.
It can be recalled that in 2016, Baba Jamal made news headlines after he lost the Akwatia seat to the NPP’s Mercy Ama Sey, whom he described as a mere hairdresser.
Jamal, who was also a Deputy Minister for Employment and Labour Relations then, put up a spirited performance with the hope of retaining the seat he won for the governing National Democratic Congress, but his best was not good enough to sail him through.
He polled 15,905 votes, while Ama Sey, whom he described as a hairdresser, garnered 21,433 of the total valid votes cast, according to provisional results from the Akwatia constituency.
It took Jamal over a decade to win the Akwatia seat in 2012, having contested four times in a row.
Click to read the original story
BAI
Cocoa value chain players warn of deepening industry decline
