Member of Parliament for Sissala East and Deputy Minister for Water and Sanitation Hon. Amidu Chinnia Issahaku has said calls to protect incumbent Members of Parliament in the Majority Group in Parliament is out of place.
While speaking at the National Delegates Conference of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in Kumasi, the Majority Leader said there is the need for the party to protect its incumbent Members of Parliament.
He believes that it’s not only elections that can be used in the selection process.
Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu indicated that the inability of the Party to protect the very experienced and astute MPs is unhealthy to the growth and development of the NPP.
“The National Party should own the process of selecting candidates to avoid any derailment in the forward march of the party. In this regard, I want to propose to the party that the constituencies should be encouraged to the largest extent possible to adopt the incumbent MPs for the purpose of the next general elections as any free-for-all election that is not guided or guarded will take over our great party,” he said.
But Speaking on Accra-based Gh One TV Hon. Amidu Chinnia Issahaku said the calls by the Majority Leader is not right ans should not be encouraged going into 2024 elections.
He believes that taking such a decision will be detrimental to the party’s chances of winning the elections because Members of Parliament will relax and that will make the grounds weak for the political party.
“As part of his comments he said that sitting Members of Parliament to some extent be protected or go unopposed. It’s a very difficult statement to be made but from where I sit and from my experience I think that as a party we have to thread cautiously. In the first place if you tell me that I am the automatic candidate for 2024, the chances that I’ll become swollen headed and take the people for granted is high and by the time we will go for 2024, the grounds would have been weak.
The party people would have been aggrieved, the constituents would have been aggrieved. Competition brings a lot of energy into the system, once I know that somebody is preparing to contest me in Sissala East do you think I will sit in Accra without going to the Constituency? Do you think I won’t pay attention to the party people, to the Constituents. Competition is the game, competition is democracy. Once you take away competition, then you kill the spirit of democracy, you kill the spirit of even the person who is supposed to work to gain the confidence of the people.
I think that there are better ways of helping sitting Members of Parliament to retain their seats either than imposing them on the constituents. The moment you decide to impose Members of Parliament on Constituencies, the Members of Parliament themselves become complacent, they will abandon the constituencies and once they abandon the constituencies, the base will become weaker and the party will become weaker and you can be sure that the next election we are going to have too many independent candidates, where you don’t have independent candidates the sitting MPs will lose because they will lose touch with the constituents. Let every Member of Parliament know that it is your work, it’s your performance that determines your ability to win the next election,” he said.