Boakye-Djan to contest Jaman South seat

Accra, June 10, GNA - Osahene Kojo Boakye-Djan, former Head of Government and Official Spokesman of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), on Tuesday declared his intention to contest for Jaman South Constituency seat as an independent candidate for Elections 2008. He said: "I have agreed to stand as an independent parliamentary candidate for the Jaman South Constituency in the Brong Ahafo Region through the sponsorship of Independent National Alternatives (PINA) foundation."

Boakye-Djan, a retired Major of the Ghana Armed Forces, who made the declaration at a press conference in Accra, called for support for independent candidates saying, "It is independent domination and/or control of parliament that will help us break the chain that constitutes the system of one party rule at its weakest point but with maximum impact."

He blamed Ghana's democratic system of governance for the wrongs of society.

"This is the system that allows one party rule with the executive that controls all the levels of power in the country, the executive, parliament and local administration, judiciary and other state and para-state organisations and institutions.

"It is this system that is not working. It may work to the benefit of the few but certainly not to the benefit of the majority of us." Osahene Boakye-Djan added: "Our democratic system has allowed the intrusion of such irrational factors such as financial persuasion, ethnicity, religion, gender, and other unwholesome personality attributes to creep into our young party political democratic practice that must be corrected."

He said the sponsorship of the independent candidate into parliament held the key for Ghanaians to turn the system around from its impotency and paralysis to make it work and avert political antagonism during this year's electioneering campaign.

The 2004 parliamentary election in Jaman South was won by the the New Patriotic Party (NPP) candidate with 17,842 votes representing 57.2 per cent.

The National Democratic Congress had 12,085 votes representing 38.7 per cent; People's National Convention obtained 782 votes representing 2.5 per cent; Convention People's Party had 337 votes representing 1.1 per cent and the Democratic People's Party 173 votes representing 0.6 per cent.

The total votes cast were 31,466, whilst total valid votes were 31,219 with 247 rejected votes. Voter turn-out was 77.3 per cent. 10 June 08