[ 2015-05-01 ]

‘Voter Apathy Was Devastating’
Former Member of Parliament (MP) for Asokwa,
Maxwell Kofi Jumah, has said voter apathy
adversely affected the New Patriotic Party (NPP)
in the 2008 general elections, noting that the
issue was particularly acute in the Ashanti
Region.

According to him, one of the hurdles the party
must deal with, as it prepares for the 2016
elections, is the problem of voter apathy.

“If you remember, in the second round of 2008
elections we had to go round with vehicles to
canvass for the people to come out in their
numbers to vote… For this reason, we need to
find out what accounted for this and work
assiduously to fix the problem,” he stated.

Speaking to journalists in Kumasi after submitting
his form to stage a comeback for his former
position, Mr Jumah, popularly known as Kofi Ghana,
said the party owed it a duty to assuage and nurse
the inner pains of voters through pep-talks that
the NPP was prepared to do well if voted to power
in 2016.

“The effort and zeal at which we are now
conducting our door-to-door campaign ought to also
be directed at voters who are sympathetic towards
the NPP. They’ve all seen the hardship in this
country, the power crisis and the mismanagement.
We have experienced power crisis for almost four
years now and still counting,” he noted.

Campaign message

The former MP stated that the party’s campaign
message must be crafted in a way that resonates
with voters’ expectations, noting that previous
campaign messages only targeted people in the
cities.

“What I’m saying is that we don’t wear
political suit to scavenge the garbage cans for
food. We need to go to the people’s level and
speak to them about our policies and programmes to
be able to win their support,” he admonished.

Kofi Ghana said he was prepared to offer himself
as a scavenger to do the party’s bidding and
work together with the grassroots for NPP’s
victory.

He appealed for support for his bid to become the
party’s parliamentary candidate for Asokwa,
intimating that he had been tried and tested, and
that he was the only leader in the constituency
who had achieved a lot for the people.

Source - Daily Guide

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